HA NOI — Medium and long-term auditing plans that suit the socio-economic development period of the country are necessary, delegates attending the workshop on strategic audit planning and modernisation of auditing methodologies held yesterday in Ha Noi agreed.
Speaking at the conference, Dao Van Dung, director of the State Audit of Viet Nam's General Affairs Department said that the SAV had only concentrated on producing annual audit plans, without taking into account the resources available such as number of auditors, budget and facilities.
He added that an annual audit plans lacked focus and was mainly based on available human resources and not the actual results needed.
The objectives and content of the audits lacked focus, and were not based on risk assessments or the monitoring of the efficiency of real Government socio-economic targets within an audited year, Dung said.
Annual plans often changed during the implementation process because of a lack of useful information provided by the audit, he added.
Therefore, the plans had not satisfied auditing requirements, meaning the efficiency of the SAV's consulting and risk-prevention role remained limited, Dung said.
Dung attributed the shortcoming to the lack of comprehensive and systematic regulations related to the planning of audits, the insufficient collection of information from audited organisations and insufficient co-operation between the SAV, specialised audits and local auditing agencies.
Information collection and planning was still largely paper-based and there was a serious lack of applied information technology, he added.
Vu Tuan Anh, representative from the National Assembly Office's Division of Finance and Budgeting, said that auditing was conducted like clockwork, every two years, a situation where there was no element of surprise, meaning mismanagement and corruption were unlikely to be easily uncovered.
Tuan Anh suggested that to make effective medium and long-term auditing plans, SAV must clearly define the State requirements in the current period.
SAV should also develop an audit database, he added.
A co-operation mechanism between the State Audit of Viet Nam and the Party and Government's inspection bodies should be constructed so that the authorities could share information and avoid overlapping investigations and supervision, while ensuring that audits are carried out in timely fashion, Hoang Quang Ham, an SAV official, said.
Bill Burnett, former director of the UK National Audit Office's International Co-operation, said that with the Action Plan on Strategic Audit Planning and Modernisation of Auditing Methodology, SAV was on the right track to improve its operations.
However, it was important to determine what kind of audits SAV wanted to do in the future and what resources such as people and IT equipment would be used for the audit, Burnett said.
"You have to make sure the legal framework reflects the need and the aims of audits," he said.
SAV should tie its operation more closely into the targets of the National Assembly and even the media, Burnett added. — VNS
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