Accountability and Transparency Report

Accountability and transparency are two important elements of good governance. They are not easily separated, both encompassing many of the same actions. Transparency is powerful and, when consistently applied, can help fight corruption, improve governance, promote accountability and engender the confidence of citizens. The concept of accountability refers to the legal and reporting framework, organisational structure, strategy, procedures and actions to help ensure that public funds are expended in a responsible, efficient and effective way.

INTOSAI-P 20 covers how SAIs can promote accountability and transparency in their work.

We encourage our member SAIs, development partners and stakeholders to use the reports in this series to:

• start a conversation with their governments and legislatures about their own status and independence

• promote the role of SAIs in contributing to the accountable and transparent use of public resources.

2023 Accountability and Transparency Report

Our 2023 Accountability and Transparency Report focuses on the effectiveness of the work of Pacific SAIs. It also draws together how SAIs contribute to the public financial management system in which SAIs are operating and, in turn, the impact of that system on the SAIs themselves.

We highlight the achievements of Pacific SAIs over recent years in improving the lives of people in the region and in helping to improve the performance of the public sector that serves them. These achievements are more significant because of the difficulties caused by COVID-19 and a range of challenging environmental and political events.

In the face of these challenges, SAIs are becoming increasingly strategic in their approach to influencing positive change to improve governance, accountability, transparency, and integrity in the public financial management system of their countries.

Our Secretary-General (and Controller and Auditor-General of New Zealand), John Ryan, launched this report in a webinar on 18 May 2023 (20 minutes). You can also watch the panel discussion that followed (42 minutes).

2015 Accountability and Transparency Report

Our 2015 Accountability and Transparency Report looked at how SAIs in the Pacific are promoting ethical behaviour and good governance practices in the public service environment. The report also considers approaches to national budget scrutiny across the Pacific, including whether SAIs could have a broader role in the scrutiny of national budgets. The report also looked at whether SAIs have sufficient financial and operational independence to undertake this expanded role and whether they have sufficient resources to undertake a broader mandate. Finally, the report followed up on the findings of the 2011 Accountability and Transparency Report.

The 2015 follow-up work showed that while some progress has been made in the areas of control of corruption, community participation in civil society and public availability of information, much work is still needed to strengthen the scrutiny role of legislatures and committees, corporate governance and media freedom and independence. 

The key message to come from this report and subsequently chosen as the title of this report, is that the primary way for SAIs to have an impact on transparency and accountability in the Pacific—to make a shift, to make a change—is to lead by example.

Reports in the series