The 38th Governing Board meeting of INTOSAI was held in Vienna from May 10-11,1993. Besides reviewing the activities of INTOSAI since the XIV INCOSAI at Washington they discussed the future plans of the Committees, Working Groups and INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI). The Board also decided on the themes for the XV INCOSAI, hosting of the XVI INCOSAI and admission of new members.
Saudi Arabia has become a member of the Governing Board, consequent on its election for a 3-year term from 1995-1998 during the XIV INCOSA11992. The other representatives of the ASOSAI in the Governing Board are Australia, Indonesia and Philippines.
The XV International Conference of Supreme Audit Institutions (INCOSAI) which will be hosted by Egypt will be held at Cairo from September 25 to October 2, 1995. It will be followed by a three-day Symposium from October 4-6, 1995.
Themes of XV INCOSAI and Topic of Symposium
The XV INCOSAI will consider two themes. Theme I will be on 'Environmental Auditing' and will be chaired by the Netherlands in their role as Chairman of the newly created working group on environmental auditing. Theme I will have three sub-themes. As in the 1992 Washington INCOSAI, theme II will be devoted to integrating the work of INTOSAI Committees into the Congress so as to offer delegates opportunities to participate in the work of the committees and to help in charting their future directions. Accordingly, Theme ll's sub-themes will focus on five committees and one working group: Auditing, Accounting, Internal Control, EDP Audit; Public debt and program Evaluation. The symposium to be held in conjunction with the congress will devote attention to the work of INTOSAI's working group on audit of privatisation.
New Members of INTOSAI
The five SAIs of United States of Micronesia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Croatia and Slovenia have joined INTOSAI. In a related action the memberships of the former Yugoslavia and Czeckoslovakia have been terminated.
Host of XVI INCOSA11998
The offer of SAI Uruguay to host the XVIINCOSAI in 1998 was welcomed by the Governing Board and it was agreed to propose Uruguay to the Congress at.Cairo.
Environmental Auditing: The working group chaired by SAI Netherlands has eleven other members including SAI New Zealand who has recently joined as a member of ASOSAI. The group has already conducted survey of all members in this field of audit. The SAIs of Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand will be preparing the principal papers on the three subthemes under Theme I: Environmental Auditing for the XV INCOSAI Cairo.
Privatization: The working group constituted under the chairmanship of the SAI UK has Seventeen members in it. The ASOSAI members who are participating in this group are Australia, India and Israel. The responses of the group members to the questionnaire framed by the SAI UK were summarised for presentation and further discussion at the inaugural meeting of the group in London in February 1994.
Programme Evaluation: The Chairman of the working group is SAI France and it has 14 members including Papua New Guinea, a member of ASOSAI. The group is formulating its work plan on three major areas: definition, comparison of experience and methodologies of program evaluation.
Auditing Standards (Chairman: Australia): SAI Australia has devised and circulated a survey form for collecting data from all INTOSAI members for the bibliography on audit guidance material.
Accounting Standards (Chairman: Canada): Accounting Statement No.3 sent to member SAIs as exposure draft is being finalised taking into account the comments of members. Statement No.4 is being developed. An associate network of partners, though not members of INTOSAI but are actively involved in the field of government accounting, has been established to help build consensus.
Internal Control Standards (Chairman: Hungary): The Committee has decided to develop a reference bibliography and has sent the survey questionnaire to all SAIs in September 1993. End of April 1994 has been fixed as the target date for receipt of completed questionnaire.
Public Debt (Chairman: Mexico): Australia and Korea, two member SAIs of ASOSAI are among the eight new members of the expanded committee. The committee held its fifth meeting at Washington from November 30 to December 1, 1993. It approved the final report on public debt survey for distribution to all member SAIs of INTOSAI. Three sub-committees have been established for drafting specific guidelines for further discussion.
Adhoc Working group on 'protocol' (Chairman: Australia): The working group has been set up to work on a protocol to amend all INTOSAI Standards. The two other members of the working group are Canada and Mexico. The group has already commenced the preliminary work.
EDP Audit (Chairman: India): Hosted by the Canadian Auditor General, Mr. Denis L. Desautels, the second meeting of the committee was held at Ottawa during October 1993 under the chairmanship of Mr.C.G. Somiah, Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Heads of SAIs or their representatives of the member countries of Austria, Canada, France, India, Japan, Kiribati, Kuwait, Sweden, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe participated in the meeting.
Welcoming the members, Mr.Somiah outlined the purpose of the meeting indicating that there was a need to identify projects, establish priorities and develop work plans for the projects. He also stated that the different levels of EDP capabilities and audit skill levels in the SAIs, would be a primary factor in determining the feasibility of projects. It was for this reason that the development of an audit training curriculum rather than holding training courses was considered as a top priority project.
The other projects identified were (i) Production of Information Technology Journal; (ii) Develop guide on IT Strategies; (iii) Develop a funding guide; (iv) compile the Information System Security Review Methodology; (v) Develop a reference list on Performance Auditing; (vi) Organise Seminar on IT Performance Audit.
The committee also discussed the potential role of the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) as well as other cooperative ventures such as the international EDP training programme to be hosted by India for SAIs of Asia and Africa.
India will be bringing out an EDP Directory based on the survey questionnaire which was discussed in the meeting.
It was decided to hold the next meeting at New Delhi from August 25-26,1994 and the fourth one at Stockholm, Sweden during March 1995 to review progress.