Auditing towards better accountablity

The Royal Au­dit Authority (RAA) dur­ing its mid-term review in Samdrupjongkhar recently launched a five-year plan document called ‘Strategic plan 2010-2015’. The plan is expected to professionalise and standardise audit ser­vices in the country.

The plan focuses on cre­ating positive impact of au­dit services in enhancing ac­countability and achieving value for money in public operations.

According to the plan, the RAA will conduct 3,386 au­dits, enhance effectiveness of audit services, improve quality and timely deliv­ery of audit services, create awareness among stake­holders and ensure organi­zational and professional development in the next five years.

The RAA will focus on risk-based audit, adopt bal­anced reporting and carry out effective follow-up on audit reports to complete auditing the targeted num­ber.

To create positive im­pact in achieving value for money in public operations, the RAA will concentrate on areas where there are more systematic problems in terms of delivering services. Holistic audit approaches will be adopted to curb and eliminate the deficiencies involved in delivering prod­ucts and services, thereby reducing the waste of gov­ernment resources.

In light of the govern­ment’s resource crunch, the RAA intends to reduce the cost of audit by adopting the best available international practices and latest tech­nologies.

Agencies requiring audit­ing will be prioritized, feasi­bility to carry out online au­diting will be explored, and audit resource management system will be developed.

The RAA currently has about 884 audit agencies that require auditing and re­porting on an annual basis, but it has only 228 employ­ees including 138 field audi­tors.

To improve quality and timely delivery of services, the RAA will strive to obtain certification from interna­tional organization of stan­dardization (ISO), acquire international clients that will assure quality, conduct impact assessment of au­dit reports, and take audit clearance system to the grassroots.

To create awareness on the roles, responsibilities and mandates of the RAA, people will be educated on the government rules and regulations that need to be adhered to while spend­ing government fund. This awareness is expected to prevent plan implementers and decision makers from taking wrong decisions.

The policy, planning and annual audit review division of the RAA will carry out the review of the implemen­tation status and achieve­ments of the strategic plan by December 2012.

In order to implement the proposed strategies, the RAA requires a budgetary outlay of Nu 809.1 million.

Meanwhile, the RAA, in the last six months, has completed 94 percent (260 audits) of 277 planned to be audited besides 11 ad-hoc audits.

However, the achieve­ment in terms of issuing the reports during the same time was only 60.7 percent with 166 reports issued against the target of 275.

The planning and policy division chief, Karma Ten­zin, said that, while it was important to conduct audits on time, it was more impor­tant to issue the reports on time.

In the last four years from January 2006 to June 2010, the RAA had conducted 2,258 audits and issued 2,430 audit reports includ­ing reports on follow-up audits. It had recovered Nu 272.7 million during the same period.

By Namgay Tshering & Sonam Pelden