G20 supreme audit institutions are partners in development

How do supreme audit institutions add value to the systems of government and how does this work impact the lived experiences of citizens in the countries they are in?

This was the guiding question that exercised the minds of heads of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) at the recent SAI20 Summit held in Johannesburg; the first to be hosted on the African continent.

SAI20 is an engagement platform for the heads of SAIs of G20 countries who convene in the country holding the G20 presidency and subsequently hosting the summit of the G20 countries. The Auditor-General of South Africa which chairs the SAI20, hosted 18 countries for this important conversation, exploring ways in which these institutions can support governments, while maintaining their independence. These discussions culminated in the adoption of the communique by consensus.

While varying in their approach, in the end, SAI20 delegates agree that as independent auditors of governments in their countries, their institutions play a critical role in enabling development by ensuring that public resources available is used to the benefit of citizens.

In the final communique, SAIs representatives agreed that they are uniquely positioned to support their governments with foresight, insight and oversight in addressing developmental challenges through their mandate and capabilities. The engagement explored how the heads of SAIs responsible for the countries and national audit offices they operate shape their work and their reports and what conversations they have with leaders in government that will best influence them to make better governance decisions.

“The capabilities of SAIs to identify, assess and mitigate current and yet-to-be identified and unmanaged risks to the economic, efficient and effectiveness of government’s use of public funds position them well to provide trusted support in making meaningful progress towards the aspirations that are currently constrained by unforeseen emerging issues,” read the final communique.

While the overall theme of the G20 is equality, sustainability as well as solidarity, the SAI20 drilled down to two key themes at the heart of development, which not only find expression as running priorities to this group of countries but are also in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

These themes explored infrastructure investments and how to approach skills development and were adopted to ensure that the conversation for SAI20 was going to be relevant and impactful.

The themes explored were: Unlocking and leveraging public infrastructure funding for equality, sustainable growth and bringing improvement to the lives of citizens and collaborative and integrative efforts for a future-ready workforce – bridging the skills gap in sustainable economic growth.

Without a doubt, investment in infrastructure is a consistent area of interest and priority in all governments and countries. Important questions include whether there is enough capital available to invest in infrastructure, and where there is enough, is the investment deployed appropriately to achieve the set infrastructure goals and objectives? Through audit work, we can help governments determine if there is appropriate long-term maintenance to help deliver services that stimulate economic activity and drive job creation.

The communique noted that “key to achieving solidarity, equality and sustainability, governments need strong public infrastructure, which fosters growth and innovation, in line with sustainable development goal (SDG) 9.

“SAIs can support their governments in addressing their infrastructure challenges by identifying, defining and recommending mitigations to key infrastructure risk factors that limit infrastructure funding as a key enabler to the accelerated narrowing of the infrastructure gap.”

These are priorities in all countries, whether they are developed or developing and as SAI20, we are aware of the critical role infrastructure development plays. The second theme on skills development was chosen with the view of economic development and sustenance.

Every country is seized with the responsibility of developing skills and developing human capital to grow its economy but also to ensure that their citizens are active participants in the economy today and tomorrow.

With regard to undertaking collaborative and integrative efforts towards bridging the skills gap for a future-ready workforce, the SAI20 noted that:

“The challenge of bridging the skills gap for a future-ready workforce has remained a key and persistent issue driven by the primary challenge of rapidly evolving needs, a complex array of mutually reinforcing levers to be pulled within both the skills development context and the broader socio-economic context by multiple stakeholders, while facing constrained resources.

Education, including the transmission, acquisition, creation and adaptation of information, knowledge, skills and values, is a key lever of sustainable development as described by SDG 4. The right to education is seen as an enabling right for the realisation of other economic, social and cultural rights, as well as a catalyst for positive societal change, social justice and peace.”

The summit was a culmination of work which began seven months ago when SAI Brazil, who was the previous chair, passed the baton on to the AGSA. The final communique that we agreed on aimed to set shared principles on these specific themes.

The first one was a sense of what it is that supreme audit institutions are going to start doing differently within their respective countries as they audit as independently as they do. This means choosing the type of focus area and perspective they will hone in on and engage with. This was a recommendation for implementation by the different auditors-general.

The second one was about things that SAIs can recommend to their governments that will help them start making gains in these two themes. Some of the recommendations are going straight to governments while the communique will be shared with the leaders of the G20 so that they can start to hear the voice of heads of SAIs and appreciate the value of SAIs as enabling partners in the journey to achieving development goals.

Various countries highlighted and buttressed issues that were up for discussion including Brazil’s urging of SAIs to stay close to events and challenges that have an impact on their work; China affirming its collaboration with other SAIs towards sustainable development, Russia calling for a structured, logical framework to development, while India focused on training the youth, especially those from rural areas, in artificial intelligence.

Saudi Arabia called for the building of effective systems that support sustainable growth; Kenya pointed out that infrastructure was more than just about concrete and steel but about the people and should reflect that and respond to the needs of the people and Norway noted 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa that lack electricity which means there is a lot of development work to be done.

In the end, representatives of all countries agreed that SAIs have a critical role to play and SAI20 is an important voice and partner in development.

The AGSA also took liberty to invite other SAIs to the conversation seeing that it was the first time this conversation was held on the continent and almost all delegates were effusive at how the summit was conducted, with Indonesia appreciating the spirit of ubuntu with which the invitation was shared with heads of SAIs and delegations falling outside of the G20.