Bhutan -Institutional Development of the Royal Audit Authority (RAA) in Delivering Performance Audit (July 2014-June 2017)

The RAA seeks to improve the quality of performance audit reports, in accordance with the ISSAIs.
The proposal is firmly anchored in the RAA’s strategic plan 2013-18 and builds on an external assessment of the RAA conducted by a UNDP consultant in 2013. In particular, it noted that RAA’s professional staff mainly posses finance and accounting qualifications, rather than the multidisciplinary and specialized skills and knowledge that provides a sound basis for effective performance auditing.
The proposal therefore includes continuous education and training in relevant fields, on-the-job learning through participation in a cooperative performance audit, and an RAA-led review and update of its existing performance audit guidelines in comparison to the relevant ISSAI guidelines.
A copy of the application is available to those interested in providing support. Please contactNTOSAI.Donor.Secretariat@idi.no
Providers of Support:
The SAI CDF approved financing partly this proposal with a grant of $275,000. The Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India is providing technical assistance and/or training facilities to this proposal.
The SAI CDF Bhutan Project has two components:
Component 1: Training of Expert Trainers (ET) and Subject Matter Experts (SME)
Component 2: Professional Development Courses based on ISSAIs
Professional Development Centre (PDC) which is presently under construction at Tsirang, Bhutan and is being funded by Government of India. The center is expected to be launched in 2015-2016 and will aim for continuous and sustained delivery of ISSAI and courses for RAA’s employees; it will also gradually cater courses to regional (ASOSAI) member countries. The SMEs and ETs trained under this project will deliver ISSAI training programs at the PDC using the Courses that are developed under the Project.
Secondly, RAA has signed MoU with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India or SAI-India on a specific activity whereby two slots are provided to RAA officials in a probation course for Indian Audit and Accounts Services (IA&AS), a key training program for civil servants who will be working in the field of accounts and audit. The training provided under this Project will complement the training provided by SAI-India in terms of addressing the overall training needs of RAA. Additionally, in the coming year, SAI-India will be providing training to the RAA staff on various topics such as change management, use GIS and GPS technologies and communication skills.
The project will serve as a good example of partnership between Government of India (GoI) and Kingdom of Bhutan and their respective SAIs and how this partnership can be further leveraged to help SAI Bhutan to implement ISSAI. While GoI is providing funds for development of infrastructure, SAI India will provide the course for the civil servants and this project will provide fund for creating specialists on knowledge and training delivery.
ET/SME would work with RAA on all kinds of ISSAIs (financial, performance and compliance) and not only specifically on performance auditing, as RAA requested in its proposal submitted under the GCP 2013. Consequently the PDO and key results are formulated very broadly.
Based on Funding Board’s comments, a detailed discussion was held with RAA and the PDO was revised. Specific PDO level Indicator and Intermediate Results Indicators were developed in consultation with RAA to bring focus to the project activities and also so that the performance against these indicators can be measured over time. 
As mentioned above the Indicators have been revised to make them more specific and clearer and to enable the measurement of progress over time. RAA shall be providing the specific data and information to measure progress against the indicators. Further details on indicators are available in the Results Framework in the attached Project Paper. 
The SMEs and ETs will be selected as per an acceptable criteria which would include: somebody who is already involved in iCAT course, experience in various audit and non-audit disciplines, qualification in respective fields; managerial position held (team leader position level) and gender representation. The task team will monitor the selection of the SMEs and ETs.