IDI Work stream Relevant SAIs 2024-2029

SAI relevance is essential for contributing to better societies and improved lives. It enables SAIs to identify and respond to emerging trends, risks and changing stakeholder expectations. It also helps SAIs demonstrate their value, which increases public trust in SAIs, and can contribute to strengthening the position of SAIs with the national accountability ecosystem.

Auditing for inclusion and equality   

IDI will maintain its strong focus on SAIs contributing to equality and inclusion through their audit work. Our plans include Equal Futures Audit initiative to create a pool of EFA Changemakers to help SAIs in developing audit strategies for equality and auditing areas of inequality like gender, poverty, disability, age, ethnicity, and migration.  Besides mainstreaming the principle of leave no one behind in all SDG audits, we will also help SAIs in conducting audits focused on the implementation of Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principles. The dimension of inclusion is also mainstreamed as a cross-cutting area of enquiry in other trending areas including the global cooperative audit of climate change adaptation actions and audit of technology.

We will help SAIs in staying relevant by developing organisational and auditor capacities to conduct audits in trending and emerging areas. We will also support SAIs in shaping future developments in public sector audit and in being recognised as key contributors in areas of national and global relevance. Our efforts to support SAIs in auditing

Developing competencies for providing assurance on sustainability reporting in the public sector 

IDI will work together with professional bodies including IFAC and ACCA and INTOSAI bodies to facilitate conversations between SAIs and key stakeholders on the role of SAIs in providing assurance on sustainability reporting. Based on the discussions we will identify competencies, needs and support SAIs in developing these competencies.

SDGs will continue, and we plan to pilot the updated version of IDI’s SDGs Audit Model (ISAM) to help SAIs in auditing national implementation processes for 2030 Agenda and national targets linked to SDGs including those linked to the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. We will deepen our support for auditing use of technology by governments and help SAIs’ auditors in using technology in audits. The LOTA Pioneers initiative will be grown into three regular streams – development of technology audit strategies, use of data analytics in audits and audit of technology. The global cooperative audit of climate change adaptation actions will support SAIs across in providing fit for purpose audit response to their government’s climate actions.

Through our Equal Futures Audit, we will help SAIs respond to the issue of sharpened inequalities. Besides these, we will continue to support SAIs in thinking future, picking up early signals on areas of relevance and auditing trending areas. We will facilitate advocacy and awareness raising events linked to the audits being conducted and continue our strong partnership with INTOSAI bodies and our partnerships with UN bodies. We plan to grow our partnerships with professional bodies, including professional accountancy organisations and academia especially for auditing sustainability reporting in the public sector.