EUROSAI Goal Team 1 (Capacity building) held its 9th meeting on 11-12 April 2016 in Budapest with the participation of 22 specialists from 13 SAIs and 2 international organizations. During the intensive two-day program, the participants actively contributed to the preparing for the next Congress of INTOSAI and EUROSAI. The event was opened by Mr László Domokos, President of the State Audit Office of Hungary.

The VIII EUROSAI Congress (Lisbon, 2 July 2011) adopted the organisation’s strategic plan for the period 2011-2017 specifying four goals, and decided on setting up four working groups, the so-called Goal Teams for the implementation thereof. One of these is the Capacity Building Goal Team, chaired by the State Audit Office of Hungary (SAO) since the IX EUROSAI Congress held in 2014.

Goal Team 1 held its 9th meeting on 11-12 April 2016 in Budapest. Mr László Domokos, President of the State Audit Office of Hungary opened the meeting and announced the Donor Cooperation between the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) and the Hungarian Government, with the aim to support the fight against corruption. From the donor funding of HUF 129 million, IDI will implement anti-corruption programs, mainly for developing countries.

The meeting was chaired by Mr. Péter Dankó, Head of the Department of Methodology and International Relations. The most important topic of the meeting was to prepare for the next INTOSAI and EUROSAI Congresses. Therefore, the first day was devoted to a workshop regarding Regional professionalism – one of the themes of the INTOSAI Congress –, which was followed by group discussions about the implementation of the EUROSAI 2017-2023 strategy. With the channelling of the meeting results, GT1 actively contributes to the next EUROSAI Strategy in terms of benefit for the partaking SAIs and also to external stakeholders.

On the second day of the meeting, the participants reviewed the fulfilment of the tasks assigned in the Operational Plan, whereby the respective SAIs reported on the progress made since the previous meeting. The EUROSAI Secretariat and Presidency representatives provided essential information about the most important activities and events in the upcoming period.

The joint project of the SAIs of Turkey, Hungary and Latvia is the development and conceptualisation of the task of delivering SAI messages using new methods and techniques. The Head of Communication Department, Bálint Horváth gave a presentation about the development opportunities and practical experiences of the SAI of Hungary. He emphasized that the State Audit Office of Hungary was among the first SAIs adopting into its operation the ISSAI 12 standard (on the values and benefits of SAIs) which aims that the utilisation perspective would penetrate the whole organisational structure and all of its activities. In addition, the Head of Communication Department presented the SAO’s utilization methodology and innovative communication tools developed by the institution, which includes the multi-lingual News-Portal, the updated format of press releases, and the electronic press conferences as well. The article on the topic is available here.

The SAO considers it its responsibility to share its knowledge among partner SAIs, therefore - based on the feedback of the delegations – the SAO will elaborate a working paper for the GT1 members. The topic will be the implementation results – measured in terms of progress – of the ISSAI 12 standard. The SAO intends to offer information and assistance to Supreme Audit Institutions in the formulation and implementation of their own set of instruments fostering innovative communication.