August 29-30, 2022. BALI, Indonesia.
A huge amount of public money is being used by all governments to handle this crisis through various initiatives at national, regional, and global level.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has been giving economic, fiscal and social pressure to all countries. It is requiring all countries to act in tackling this unprecedented crisis. A huge amount of public money is being used by all governments to handle this crisis through various initiatives at national, regional, and global level.
G20 has a strong commitment to address today’s most pressing global challenges and to converge upon common efforts to recover better from the COVID19 crisis and enable sustainable and inclusive growth in countries and across the world. These issues are urgent as this health crisis has transformed into an economic crisis to which collaborative actions are urgently required to improve governance resilience and to ensure business sustainability.
Given the multidimensional of this current pandemic crisis, the multi-stakeholder engagement is needed to accelerate joint efforts by creating an oversight “ecosystem”2, where all interconnected actors such as legislatures, public officials, civil society organizations, and actors in the public financial management areas, each have parts to play.
SAI
Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) could have substantial impacts in developing effective states to respond with more agile and reliable governance, democratic development and trust in the society. This is in line with SAIs’ global objective to play a key role in making a difference to the lives of the citizens.
In this context, each country’s SAI needs to take a role as partners of G20 governments in ensuring and improving the performance and accountability of public sector agencies as well as the effectiveness of their programs and policies.
To assure that the audit recommendations of SAIs is well implemented, parliaments as legislature bodies should also take part in oversighting the government, so that state programs and planning are aligned with parliaments’ recommendations as well as the public interests. The synergy among these three pillars is expected to set up government accountability and the greatest prosperity of the people.
Public sector auditing, as championed by SAIs, has an essential part to promote the efficiency, accountability, effectiveness, and transparency of public administration,4 while solidifying global response to the COVID-19 crisis and supporting SDGs implementation.
Therefore, SAIs should appropriately respond to the challenges of civil society, the expectations of multiple stakeholders, and the emerging risks and changing environments in which audits are conducted in order to enable accountability and credibility of SAIs. Those important roles require SAIs to demonstrate relevance to the government, parliament, and other stakeholders, including the citizens.
As SAIs should be able to demonstrate accountability and credibility of its operation, it is also necessary for SAIs to prepare for arising risks and the possibility of rapid changes in audits. Hence, SAIs ought to have an effective dialogue with stakeholders on strategies to promote enhancement in the public sector. Providing assurance on governance, management and policy impact, remains at the core of the future of audit.
Additionally, SAIs should have a good understanding of developments in the wider public sector, more importantly in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, to contribute to the achievement of SDGs and to have meaningful dialogues with stakeholders about how the works of SAIs can facilitate improvements in the public sector management. The role of foresight, resilience and sustainability are key strategies to enable public sectors in promoting and practicing agile governance in this new era.
SAI20 UNDER THE G20 FRAMEWORK
In line with the theme of the Indonesian G20 Presidency “Recover Together, Recover Stronger”, there is a need to establish an engagement group focusing on good and accountable governance through the role of SAIs under the G20 framework, or the SAI20.
This engagement group is expected to strengthen and empower their audit engagements through policy dialogue and identification of best practices. In the current VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) context, public sector management and policy making are rapidly changing, therefore there is a need to increase the role of SAI in the establishment and development of foresight capacity.
This role would be exercised in the framework of SAI 20 as the leading engagement group on creating forward-looking approaches of post-Covid19 governance as well as achieving SDGs targets. Although SAIs operate under different mandates and models, with the establishment of the SAI20, each SAI of the G20 countries will be able to promote the value and benefits of their audit works to democracy and accountability in their respective jurisdictions. This forum could also create an opportunity for increased openness and collaboration with stakeholders to improve the quality and depth of SAIs’ audit works and to improve governance resilience.
Further, the SAI20 shall serve as a platform to share its strategic foresight so that the work of the G20 could guide governments toward approaches that make communities more resilient, as well as enhance the good and accountable policy making among the G20 member states.
Lastly, SAI20 should take part not only to restore the economic condition, but also to ascertain business sustainability, thus it could lead to better lives of the citizens, a better world, and establish accountability for all.
POLICY APPROACH AND OBJECTIVES
The establishment of the SAI20 aims to:
Promote collaboration among SAIs in G20 countries and other stakeholders to contribute adjust oversight, develop insight, and provide strategic foresight to foster accountable economic governance; and
Develop a platform for strengthening SAI’s role as a partner of G20 member states in responding to global issues.
These aims represent the SAI20’s policy objective to promote stronger mutual understanding among the SAIs in order to fulfil SAI20’s Commitment on carrying out its role as a reliable and strategic partner to the government to ensure business sustainability and to improve resilient governance.
Source Link: https://sai20.org/en/about-us/