"TOWARDS A DIAGNOSTIC AUDIT." This can be the key for evolving an audit outlook akin to Kitaigorodoski's first-rate theory. For 'prediction' read 'diagnosis.' Government auditors will easily identify themselves with his other two theories. We shall disown the rating and concede that diagnosis is the need of the hour.
Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) can aspire to influence the decision making process towards best possible choices by including diagnostic audit also in the package. Regularity audit gathers the evidence, the certification audit scrutinises the information and performance audit yields perceptions. Skills can be developed, strategies can be steered and research can be directed towards a diagnostic presentation. Medical practitioners look to symptoms and markers for arriving at a diagnosis. It is possible for the auditor to use the analysis of observed events to present an integrated set of principles leading to a testable proposition which can highlight the emerging relationships and project possible options.
A recent Audit Report seeks to do all that. In his Report (CAO/OCG-90-5 September 1990 United States General Accounting Office.) to the Congressional Requesters on the Budget Deficit, the Comptroller General of the United States predicted that debt service costs would replace defence as the largest item in the budget by 1992, expressed his concern about economic growth being adversely effected by the depletion of savings in the 1980's and recommended the reversal of the trend by a fiscal policy swing aiming at a surplus of approximately two percent GNP annually, by 1997.
Audit mandates vary and administrative needs will differ. No one model can be transplanted straightaway. SAIs can confidently work towards a: diagnostic audit, in their own characteristic way, by recognising the gains for better governance. None can serve a nation better than the audit and administration acting together, having won mutual confidence.