EUROSAI. Magazine N21 - 2015

EUROPEAN ORGANISATION OF SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS REPORTS OF EUROSAI GOAL TEAMS, WORKING GROUPS, TASK FORCE AND MONITORING COMMITTEE 35 www.eurosai.org · N.º 21 - 2015 • • Monitor SAIs’ ethical frameworks and practices as a tool for improvement. • • Follow and support the work of ISSAI 30 review and IDI 1 . As concerns the second goal, the objectives of the TFA&E are to: • • Issue common guidelines to audit ethics (integrity). • • Raise awareness and encourage SAIs to audit ethics related issues. • • Monitor SAIs’ ethics related audit practices. As common objective for both goals, the TFA&E will disseminate progress both to EUROSAI Members and to other INTOSAI Regional Working Groups. 2. Promoting ethics as a pillar of SAIs To promote ethics as a pillar of SAIs, the TFA&E has decided to use all the possible opportunities to raise awareness on ethics’ issues. With that purpose, and adding to the earlier events (namely the seminar “ Enhancing Ethics within SAIs ”, held in Lisbon in January 2014), workshops on ethics have been conducted in the EUROSAI Congress 2014 (The Hague), in the EUROSAI-OLACEFS Conference 2015 (Quito) and are also planned for the YES Conference 2015 (Jerusalem). The Task Force has also realized that it could use the occasion of the meetings to spread its 1 IDI: INTOSAI Development Initiative. message within the hosting SAI. Thus, both in the 2014 meeting, in Romania, and in the 2015 meeting, in Italy, meetings with colleagues from those SAIs were held. Information on the TFA&E activities and products was given to their members, management and auditors. In Rome, interactive group sessions were organised, so that Italian colleagues could give their opinion on the importance of ethics issues in their organisation as well as provide inputs for the TFA&E work. Following the workshop held in the 2014 Congress, where leaders from SAIs were invited to discuss the issue, the TFA&E has produced a document on “ The importance of ethics leadership ”, identifying the important leading and management attitudes and initiatives to make sure ethics is a key pillar of SAIs. This document is available in the TFA&E website and has based several activities of the Task Force, namely the contributions for the ISSAI 30 review process. Work on preparing ideas for videos to raise awareness on ethics as well as guidance to strengthen the ethics’monitoring and control systems in SAIs is in progress. Some of the planned tasks, such as the videos and an electronic forum, will depend on available resources and tools, namely an electronic platform to be used by EUROSAI. The activity under Goal 1 has been quite dependent and interrelated with the review of ISSAI 30. Several members of the EUROSAI TFA&E (SAIs of Albania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and The Netherlands) have been actively and intensively participating in this review. The new ISSAI 30 exposure draft will include requisites and guidance, both to SAIs and staff, which are aligned with the main TFA&E work conclusions (notably the organisational responsibilities of SAIs to reduce risks of unethical behaviour: see “ Ethics within SAIs” TFA&E papers). This has represented important work for these members and, at the same time, will set the basis for some of the main projects included in the current TFA&E working plan.