Topic Guide: External Audit and Oversight

Auditing the auditors: international standards to hold supreme audit institutions to account. Clench, B., 2010. http://www.transparency.org/fi...

This Helpdesk answers tackles the question of whether there are internationally agreed standards or guidelines with respect to external audits on SAIs and how SAIs are held to account. The paper concludes that there are no internationally agreed guidelines for external audits of SAIs. INTOSAI provides international guidelines on key principles for SAIs and encourages peer reviews of SAIs. Summarised, it is found that accountability of SAIs is usually vis-a-vis the legislature or the judiciary.

The role of supreme audit institutions in combating corruption. Evans, A., 2008.
http://www.u4.no/publications/...

The paper gives a comprehensive overview about the role of SAIs in anti-corruption. It focuses on concrete activities that SAIs can undertake, techniques to be acquired, and audit focuses to be changed for anti-corruption efforts. It concludes that the role of SAIs in fighting corruption is primarily an indirect one, centring on deterrence and prevention. Successful approaches include identifying and publicising areas of corruption risk, working closely with other institutions and publicising the recommendations of audit reports more widely.