EUROSAI. Magazine N21 - 2015

EUROPEAN ORGANISATION OF SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS Eurosai Activities 8 www.eurosai.org · N.º 21 - 2015 The 43 rd meeting of the EUROSAI Governing Board (GB) took place in Helsinki, Finland on 10 March 2015, under the Chair of the EUROSAI President and hosted by the National Audit Office of Finland. The President of EUROSAI, Ms. Saskia J. Stuiveling, announced that items on the agenda would be discussed first and the needed decisions would be taken at the end of the meeting under item 21 “Pending Decisions & AOB”. However, the draft agenda was adopted to be able to proceed with the items of the agenda. The MAIN DISCUSSIONS referred to the following issues: Items 3 and 4.— The Secretary General, Mr. Ramón Álvarez de Miranda, presented the 2014-2015 EUROSAI Activity Report and the 2014 EUROSAI Financial Report. The Secretary General informed that the audit report would be presented to the GB as soon as the auditors issued it, being the field work planned for the last week of April 2015. Moreover, he communicated that a funding request from the Chair of the WG on Disasters and Catastrophes had been received and that it would be submitted to the GB by written procedure, following the global report and recommendation by Goal Team 4. Discussions dealt with the kind of expenses that could be covered by the EUROSAI budget, being the general agreement that they were mainly those related to technical support, including expenses derived from inviting external speakers and those originated by meetings of EUROSAI GTs, WGs and TF, whereas hospitality expenses could not be covered by the EUROSAI budget. The GB also discussed what other initiatives could be promoted by the GB (such as a prize for research and audit works of SAIs, e-meetings and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Mr Alar Karis will look into the last item and report back to the Governing Board on the use of MOOCs by EUROSAI. Item 5.— The President of EUROSAI, Ms. Saskia J. Stuiveling, presented the lessons learnt from the IX th EUROSAI Congress. The Congress was very well received by participants, but lessons for the next Congress include reconsidering the number of workshops and the use of the mindmapping as a reporting tool. The President of the SAI of Finland, Mr. Tuomas Pöysti, introduced the Padlet application at this GB meeting, inviting the GB participants to use it throughout the meeting for interacting and for providing feedback on the IX th Congress format. Item 6.— The new activities derived from the IX th EUROSAI Congress were debated, focusing on 3 issues: cooperative audit activities on health care, extractive industries and open data. Ms. Stuiveling explained the approach for these new activities and the participants exchanged views on them. Finland offered to take the lead in the area of Health care. The Netherlands will lead extractive industries and Open Data is a shared responsibility of GT1 and the ITWG. Some SAIs expressed their interest in being involved in one or more projects. Item 7.— Ms. Stuiveling presented the proposal sent by GT4 for an independent evaluation of EUROSAI and asked the GB members if they agreed with the key steps of the process, the GB’s role and the way of disseminating the outcome of the self-assessment. Mr. Omer Karamollaoglu, representing the SAI of Turkey, expressed some concerns about the second phase of the process being based on the results of the self-assessment. Ms. Stuiveling shared that in the Netherlands it is quite normal to use a self-assessment as a preparatory phase of an independent evaluation. The Secretary 43 rd EUROSAI GOVERNING BOARD MEETING SUMMARY OF THE MAIN DISCUSSIONS AND AGREEMENTS (Helsinki, Finland, 10 March 2015)