The 34th Meeting of the Governing Board of ASOSAI is scheduled in New Delhi from December 1-3, 2004. Some of the important items for discussion will be Training Activities, revision of the terms of reference for ASOSAI Training Committee, 7th ASOSAI Research Project on “Audit Quality Management Systems”, and Asian Journal on Government Audit. SAI-Japan in their capacity as the Administrator of the ASOSAI training activities will report on the past training programmes and future plans. Terms of reference of the Training Committee are being revised to include IDI supported activities. Director General of IDI would be attending the Training Committee meeting which is scheduled for November 30, 2004.
Every year, ASOSAI organises one workshop for its member SAIs. The topic of the workshop for 2004 is “Audit of Public Debt”.
The Course Design meeting for the 2004 workshop was held in Beijing, China from July 19-30, 2004. The Workshop will be held in Canberra, Australia from October 4-15, 2004.
Each member SAI has been requested by the Training Administrator to send one participant for the workshop.
The 2nd meeting of the 7th ASOSAI Research Project on Audit Quality Management System (AQMS), held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 12 – 17 July 2004, was attended by the members of the ASOSAI Research team from Supreme Audit Institutions of Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Yemen.
The research project on audit quality management system (AQMS) is being taken up on the basis of the decision taken in the 33rd Governing Board meeting of ASOSAI at Philippines, Manila in October, 2003. As per the implementation model for the project, the first two phases of the project, as detailed below, are to be completed by the end of the year, 2004:
Phase I: Compiling prevalent Audit Quality Management Practices both in private and public sector auditing.
Phase II: Preparing a model Audit Quality Management System based on the findings from Phase-I.
During the first meeting of the research project held at New Delhi between 31 March to 2 April 2004, the key elements of the audit quality management framework were identified and it was decided to prepare draft guidelines on Audit Quality Management System based on the framework and after documenting the best practices on audit quality. The five key elements of the quality framework are:
1.Leadership and Direction (Vision and Mission, Auditing and Professional Standards, Strategic Direction & Planning, Strategic Audit Planning - Selecting the Audit, Audit Methodology, Portfolio and Risk Management).
2.Human Resources (Resourcing and recruitment, Training and capacity building, Performance Management, Professional Development and Assessment and Personal Welfare and Benefits).
3.Audit Performance (Audit Planning, Operational Planning, Sampling and other tools and techniques, Staffing for the audit, Conduct of the Audit – Project Management, Independence, Objectivity and Competence and skills, Consultation, Supervision and Review, Evidence, Documentation and Reporting and Follow-up)
4.Client Relations (Communicating Audit messages, Stakeholders consultation, Clients and Stakeholders Satisfaction – Feedback from clients and stakeholders, Effective Reporting, relationship between Parliamentary Committees like PAC and SAI).
5.Monitoring and Review (Internal Audit /Internal Quality Assurance Review, Peer Review, Assessing Client and Stakeholders Satisfaction, Lessons learned, Summarizing and Disseminating Messages, Monitoring Progress and Assessing Impact).
After the first start-up meeting, a questionnaire on AQMS was circulated to some of the SAIs. Responses were received from SAIs such as US, UK, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and Netherlands and also from some of the participating countries, which are being used as input for the draft model guidelines. It was decided at the end of the first meeting that each participating member would work on the documentation of best practices on audit quality both in the public and private sector auditing.
The 2nd meeting at Kuala Lumpur deliberated on the documented best practices and the proposed structure of the AQMS guidelines. At the end of the meeting, the framework for the audit quality management system with all its elements and sub-elements was finalized. It was decided that draft Guidelines incorporating all the sub-elements of the AQMS framework would be prepared, based on the documented best practices on audit quality prevalent in some of the SAIs and the private sector auditing firms. The meeting also identified some of the areas for training in audit quality management. The research team is currently giving final shape to the draft guidelines on AQMS and both the guidelines and the documented best practices are expected to be ready for the presentation of the interim report to the ASOSAI Governing Body at its 34th meeting in December 2004.
(Provided by Mr. R. N. Ghosh of SAI-India)