Time is a continuum, we are often told. Yet human being have a penchant for taking cognisance of and celebrating periodic landmarks both in their personal and professional lives. INTOSAI completed its 50 years in 2003 and ASOSAI its 25 years in 2004, a respectable parent-child age gap. While both the organisations continue to strive for ensuring greater independence and higher professional competence for their members, a new vibrance is evident in their zeal. INTOSAI Congress to be held shortly at Budapest is expected to adopt a Strategic Plan for 2005-2010 and seek new ideas for enhancing co-operation among its members. All its Committees and Task Forces have been providing valuable service in operating to new challenges. The regional groups, including ASOSAI, have to take the task further by meeting the specific needs of their members. The enhanced level of activities within ASOSAI are evident in the various reports received from our members, featured in this Journal.
Your Journal proposes to play its role, however limited in this Cyber age. A new feature being introduced is on the work of INTOSAI Committees. We start the series with the Committee on Auditing Standards whose ‘bridging document’ will go down in INTOSAI history as a major step towards alignment of auditing standards with private sector auditing.
Your Journal has also been a medium of exchanging news among members. This function has now been taken over by the website which can display news with coloured photograph etc. instantaneously & continuously. We will however continue to feature summarised news in the Journal for those members who haven’t yet been smitten by the Internet.
Finally, for those of you who did not notice, this is the promised ‘second issue’ of 2004. The two issues of 2004 have together featured 17 articles as compared to the average of 5 articles in three preceding years. The credit for this goes to all the members who put in effort to send their contributions. Needless to say the success of this enterprise will depend on continued co-operation of our readers.
I would like to extend a warm welcome to new readers in Bahrain, Cambodia, Mauritius, Afghanistan, Georgia and LAO PDR, SAIs which are joining ASOSAI to take its membership to 42.
(Sunil. K. Bahri)