Strengthening Performance Audit Capacity in Asia and the Pacific

The knowledge and support technical assistance (TA) will enhance the capacity of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) of developing member countries (DMCs) to conduct performance audits, contributing to stronger accountability mechanisms for more effective and transparent delivery of government programs. The TA will (i) support the conduct of a gap analysis (benchmarking) of the performance audit capacity of SAIs against international standards and develop an action plan to address any gaps and/or weaknesses identified; (ii) deliver trainings, workshops, professional development, and other tools to implement the action plan; and (iii)
provide end-to-end guidance in conducting performance audits of publicly funded programs, including the National Deployment and Vaccination Plans (NDVPs) for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The DMCs participating in the TA include Bangladesh, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.1
This initiative is expected to facilitate sustainable performance audit practices in SAIs. This involves helping SAIs in enhancing organisational systems as well as professional staff capacities required to deliver high quality performance audits which have an impact. The quality of audits depends on quality of strategic and annual planning, audit methodology, audit follow-up, quality management and professional competence of SAI auditors.
As such, sustainable performance audit practice will require intervention both support for organisational systems development as well as developing the professional competencies of SAIs performance audit team. This also means that the knowledge and skills acquired during the project will not lie with the individual staff members having directly been involved in project activities including pilot audits. Instead, the knowledge will be rolled-out to all staff members and embedded in SAI’s environment and processes thus ensuring common approach to auditing and medium, and long-term impact. It will also involve supporting the SAI to put in place regular systems for professional development of its performance auditors.