EUROSAI. Magazine N18 - 2012

> 47 < ISAAI SPOTLIGHT EUROPEAN ORGANISATION OF SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS www.eurosai.org No. 18 - 2012 The INTOSAI Development Initiative has embarked on the ISSAI Implementation Initiative from 2012. This World Bank funded project, in collaboration with different stakeholders seeks to coordinate the implementation of ISSAIs across eligible SAIs. The Programme aims at strengthening the institution of Public Audit across the SAIs through Capacity Development in implementation of the standards. Background The 20 th INTOSAI Congress adopted a comprehensive set of International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAIs [ 1 ] ) that cover the core audit disciplines of financial, compliance and performance audits. The adoption of the ISSAIs represents a milestone in the strengthening of the global public sector audit profession and will serve as a key tool for securing greater uniformity in the way public sector auditing is conducted. This will in turn contribut e to improving audit quality; facilitate benchmarking of current practices against internationally recognized best practices, and for ensuring increased credibility of SAI audit reports. [ 1 ] The ISSAIs are available on: www.issai.org For the ISSAIs to fulfil their potential, they need to be applied globally by the SAI community. A vast majority of the 190 INTOSAI members are located in developing countries. Many of these SAIs will face challenges in the successful implementation of the voluminous ISSAI framework. The ISSAIs are frequently technical and complex, and may represent challenges in terms of securing coherence between national manuals and standards and the ISSAIs, and in building staff capacity to ensure successful implementation. INTOSAI’s Strategic Plan envisages“the role of the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) will be to take forward the implementation of the ISSAIs”. The SAIs themselves have also expressed a need to become more professional in their work, as reflected in the 2010 SAI Stocktaking Report [ 2 ] . The INTOSAI Regional Secretariats have also emphasized the need to strengthen the quality of audit work in their regions. [ 2 ] Available on: http://www.idi.no/artikkel.aspx?MId 1 = 24 &AId= 407 ISSAIs will help SAIs globally to enhance their… Quality Credibility Professionalism n The adoption of the ISSAIs represents a milestone in the strengthening of the global public sector audit profession and will serve as a key tool for securing greater uniformity in the way public sector auditing is conducted. n The ISSAI Implementation Initiative. Standardization of audit skills for strengthening public audit INTOSAI Development Iniciative (IDI) n For the ISSAIs to fulfil their potential, they need to be applied globally by the SAI community. n