By Sinaroseta Palamo-Iosefo, Director – Practice Development, PASAI

The current role of SAIs

Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) are independent bodies that assess whether public resources are used economically, effectively and efficiently for their intended purposes, on behalf of the parliament/legislature. By performing timely, high-quality and impactful audits, these institutions contribute to good governance and continually drive improved outcomes for all.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly pushed everyone into unchartered waters. The resulting lockdowns and safety restrictions dramatically changed the normal SAI practise of being physically present at the audited entity’s premises.

At the same time, considerations like inclusiveness, gender equality and leaving no one behind are being integrated in global and national initiatives creating new norms, risks and priorities for all to manage. So how can SAIs continue to make an impact and contribute to a quality life for all in the face of these new challenges and considerations?

How SAIs can achieve impact

SAIs can continue to make an impact by auditing relevant and emerging issues such as those resulting from the pandemic. This involves identifying appropriate focus areas and carefully designing audits. To identify relevant issues, SAIs need to be aware of what’s going on in their jurisdiction and have a good understanding of the pertinent issues affecting government, organisations and citizens.

When designing the audit, SAIs may consider a different approach, such as conducting agile audits of high risk and high priority areas of government. A key feature of agile audits is a short time frame to complete and to report on the audit to facilitate immediate improvements.

With an agile approach to audit, having a manageable audit scope and focusing on audit impact throughout the audit process is crucial. Audits can be scoped in terms of focus areas (for example, a government socio-economic stimulus package) or in terms of a time period (such as examining the distribution of benefits under a socio-economic relief package during the last six months).

With the shifting challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, SAIs should adapt the design of audits to ensure timely results, making effective recommendations available to auditees and other stakeholders.

Currently, two Pacific SAIs [1] are participating in the INTOSAI Development Initiative’s global transparency, accountability and inclusiveness (TAI) audit of emergency funding for COVID-19 [2]. To respond to the health and socio-economic crisis caused by the pandemic, the TAI audit focussed on evaluating established public frameworks to regulate emergency funding and manage actual spending to ensure transparency, accountability and inclusiveness.

Inclusiveness in public spending means the allocation and utilisation of emergency funding to reach the furthest behind, and prioritisation of those vulnerable and most affected by the pandemic, such as women, people with disabilities, the poor and workers in the informal sector. The TAI audit adopts an agile approach where audit teams scoped the work to ensure they perform a quality, timely and impactful audit.

Achieving impact through collaboration

SAIs are more likely to achieve audit impact when they actively engage with the relevant stakeholders throughout the audit process. This may include, for example, the auditee and interested civil society organisations during the planning phase, and parliamentary accounts committees (PACs) and the media during the reporting phase.

Positive impact is possible when all involved work collaboratively. That includes those conducting the audit, office holders taking corrective actions as recommended in the audit report and citizens monitoring results.

When SAIs actively lead this engagement they should be able to demonstrate their relevance in making a difference in the lives of citizens.

Endnotes

[1] Solomon Islands and Tuvalu

[2] Transparency, Accountability & Inclusiveness Audits
https://idi.no/work-streams/professional-sais/tai-audits

The Pacific Association of Supreme Audit Institutions (PASAI) is the official association of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) in the Pacific region, promoting transparent, accountable, effective and efficient use of public sector resources in the Pacific. It contributes to that goal by helping its member SAIs improve the quality of public sector auditing in the Pacific to recognised high standards. Our blog includes topics that may help auditors think about some implications to service delivery because of the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).