News

What would you do if you had the chance to meet Auditors General from around the world?

Standing for the Brazilian national anthem at the opening plenary of INCOSAI XXIV in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Would you ask them about what they are auditing? About what impact they are having on government efficiency or how they are shining a spotlight on the misuse of funds? Or about the operational challenges they are facing?

Earlier this month Caroline Jorgensen, Vice-President, International Programs, and I had the chance to have these conversations when we attended the INCOSAI conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Caroline Jorgensen and Sharon Clark in front of the conference site

INCOSAI is the triennial conference of INTOSAI, the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, also known as national audit offices.

Delegates all met in a huge conference hall to hear about new commitments to fight corruption, and in smaller rooms to talk about how to implement them. We heard about an INTOSAI-wide collaborative audit on climate change. We heard about gender equality, cybersecurity, peer-to-peer support, and much more.

Caroline and I talked to Auditors General and other representatives from Cameroon, Tanzania, South Africa, and Zambia, from Argentina, Costa Rica, and Haiti, from Maldives, Korea, Finland, and the US, among many other countries.

We spoke to CAAF graduate Fellows who told us how their experience in Canada changed their lives forever and enabled them to contribute to the development of their audit office’s performance audit practices.

Sharon Clark with Stephen Sanford of the US Government Accountability Office and Chandra Kanta Bhandari of the Office of the Auditor General of Nepal

We also talked to representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and all the INTOSAI Regional Organizations to explore synergies and try to match audit offices interested in our training with those who could fund it.

And CAAF won an award! I accepted the INTOSAI Elmer B. Staats award on behalf of Marie-Hélène Bérubé and Jane Fuller for their article Auditing Gender Equality: An Opportunity for SAIs to Make a Difference and Lead by Example (see pages 18-21). At each INCOSAI conference, this award is presented by the International Journal of Government Auditing, the official communication tool of INTOSAI, to the authors of the best article published by the Journal over the previous three years. We were honoured that this article—about how audits can examine gender equality and the impacts of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada’s audits on Gender-Based Analysis Plus—was recognized.

All of this helped us learn more about the challenges and opportunities facing audit offices and build critical relationships. This in turn will help us coordinate with development partners as we continue contributing to improved performance auditing and accountability around the world.