Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..01 We are accountable to the Legislative Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..03 One
of our responsibilities to the Assembly is to maintain our
independence We provide our planning and performance reports to the Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..09 Our business and financial plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..13 Our performance report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..20 Our Fall and Spring Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..24 Government
officials challenge our workplan, conclusions, findings We perform our work following professional standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..33 A summary of how we discharge our responsibilities to the Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38
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| Introduction | .01 .02 |
Sometimes, people ask how our Office is
accountable and to whom. Accountability means the obligation to answer for a responsibility that has been conferred. It presumes the existence of at least two parties: one who allocates responsibility and one who accepts it with the undertaking to report upon the manner which it has been discharged. 1 In this Chapter, we describe how we fulfill our obligation to report on and answer questions about how we carry out our responsibilities. We hope this description will assist others understand and assess issues related to accountability. |
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.03 Through The Provincial Auditor Act, the Legislative Assembly gives important responsibilities to the Office of the Provincial Auditor. Therefore, we are accountable to the Assembly. We accept our responsibilities and the obligation to report on and explain how we fulfil our responsibilities.
.04 We perform independent examinations of the Government's management systems, practices and reports. We report our conclusions, findings and recommendations to the Assembly.
.05 We strive to perform our examinations in an effective manner and to ensure we are making the best use of the public money entrusted to our Office.
One of our responsibilities to the Assembly is to maintain our independence of the Government
.06 Through The Provincial Auditor Act, the Assembly provides us the authority and autonomy necessary to carry out our examinations and to report in an independent manner. Through this Act, the Assembly makes us independent of the Government.
.07 Some people express the view that since our Office is independent of the Government we are not accountable to the Government. We agree. Maintaining our independence of the Government is one of our key responsibilities to the Assembly. However, we are accountable to the Assembly.
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.08 In addition, some people confuse autonomy and accountability. Some hold the view that because an organization has the authority and, thus, the autonomy to make key decisions, the organization is not or does not have to be accountable. We disagree strongly. We think a strong system of accountability is a prerequisite to autonomy. In addition, we think there is a strong system of accountability for our Office.
We provide our planning and performance reports to the Assembly
.09 Each year, we provide the Assembly with our planning and performance reports. We attend public meetings of the Assembly's standing committees in which legislators ask us questions about how we fulfil our responsibilities to the Assembly.
.10 Our planning report is called our Business and Financial Plan. Our performance report is called our Annual Report on Operations.
.11 We provide our Business and Financial Plan to all legislators, the Board of Internal Economy, the Standing Committee on Estimates, and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We provide our Annual Report on Operations to all legislators, the Board of Internal Economy and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
.12 We are continually seeking new ways to improve our planning and performance reports. We prepare these reports in a manner consistent with what we recommend for all government organizations. We encourage officials of all government organizations to examine these reports and provide us with feedback. Also, these reports are available to the public.
.13 We present our Business and Financial Plan (our Plan) to the Board of Internal Economy in support of our request for money to carry out our responsibilities. The information in our Plan is similar to the information we recommend the Government provide to the Assembly.
.14 The Board of Internal Economy is made up of seven MLAs representing the governing party, the official opposition, and the third party. The majority of members are from the governing party including two Cabinet Ministers. The Speaker of the Assembly is the Chair.
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.15 The Board holds public meetings to ask us questions about what we propose in our Plan. Our Plan sets out and explains how we plan to fulfil our responsibilities to the Assembly. A responsibility of the Board is to recommend to the Minister of Finance the amount of money the Minister should include in the Estimates for our Office.
.16 Recently, several members of the Board expressed concern that they are not sufficiently familiar with the work of our Office to assess adequately the proposals included in our Plan. The members suggested our Plan be referred to a government-appointed audit committee. We disagree because this impacts our independence of the Government. We do not think government officials should decide how we audit the Government.
.17 To assist the Board become sufficiently familiar with the work of our Office, we decided to provide our Plan to the Assembly as a report. By law, the Assembly sends all of our reports to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (PAC), an all party Committee of the Assembly.
.18 The PAC works closely with our Office and, thus, should be sufficiently familiar with our work to assess our Plan. We want to provide the PAC with the opportunity to advise the Board of Internal Economy on the relevance of our work to the PAC, the Assembly and, thus, to the public. The PAC is responsible for holding the Government accountable for its management of public money. The PAC is the audit committee for the Assembly.
.19 We also present our Plan to the Standing Committee on Estimates. This Committee is also an all party Committee of the Assembly. This Committee holds public meetings to ask us questions about what we propose in our Plan. A responsibility of this Committee is to recommend to the Assembly the amount of money we should receive to carry out our responsibilities.
.20 We publish an Annual Report on Operations (our Performance Report). This Report goes to all legislators and is referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We also provide this Report to the Board of Internal Economy so it can better understand and assess our plans and performance.
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.21 The information in our annual Performance Report is consistent with what we recommend the Government provide in its annual reports to the Assembly. Our Performance Report includes our audited financial statements and other key performance information relating to the costs and quality of our work and the achievement of our objectives.
.22 In our Performance Report, we also include the reports of an external auditor who examines our management systems, practices and reports. That auditor reports his conclusions, findings and recommendations to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts pertaining to:
- whether our financial statements are reliable;
- whether we maintain adequate rules and procedures to safeguard and control our assets; and
- whether we comply with the authorities governing our activities relating to financial reporting, safeguarding assets, revenue raising, spending, borrowing, and investing.
.23 On June 7, 1996, our Performance Report for the year ended March 31, 1996 was provided to all legislators and made public.
.24 Each year, we provide the Assembly with a Fall Report, a Spring Report and any other Report we consider necessary. In these Reports, we set out the results of our examinations in terms of conclusions, findings and recommendations.
.25 The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) holds public meetings to consider these Reports. Officials of government organizations appear as witnesses at the Committee's meetings. The Committee and these officials challenge what we report. Such challenge helps us ensure we fulfil our responsibilities to the Assembly in an effective manner.
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.26 The PAC, the Assembly's audit committee, reports to the Assembly its views of the contents of our Reports. We are pleased to note the PAC has endorsed most of our recommendations. The PAC can serve as a key agent of positive change in our system of government.
Government officials challenge our workplan, conclusions, findings and recommendations
.27 We work closely with many government officials. We do this to ensure we carry out our responsibilities to the Assembly in an effective manner. We want to ensure our work is done with the cooperation of government officials. We also want to ensure our conclusions, findings and recommendations pertaining to government organizations are accurate, understood and reasonable. The acceptance of our recommendations is one of our key performance indicators.
.28 Each year, we discuss our audit plan for each government organization with government officials. These audit plans set out: what work we need to do; the staff from our Office who will do that work and when; and the work the organization needs to do, the organization's staff who will do that work and when. These plans are important work schedules and agreements. If we do not or cannot meet these schedules, we explain why to the officials of those organizations.
.29 When we complete each of our audits, we usually provide a written report to the Minister responsible for the organization. These reports include our conclusions, findings and recommendations. The contents of these reports form the basis for deciding what to include in our Fall Reports and our Spring Reports to the Assembly.
.30 Before we send these reports to the Ministers responsible, we discuss drafts with government officials. We want to ensure government officials have the opportunity to challenge what we plan to report. Often, government officials will ask us to attend meetings of their boards of directors to discuss the contents of our reports and to answer questions.
.31 As required by The Provincial Auditor Act, we send our Fall and Spring Reports to a government-appointed audit committee before we provide those Reports to the Assembly. We also meet with this committee. The purpose of this committee is to ensure the Government receives a copy of our Reports before they are made public. In addition, this committee advises the Executive Government, i.e., Cabinet, on the contents of our Reports.
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.32 We encourage government officials to challenge our workplans, conclusions, findings and recommendations. Such challenge helps to ensure what we report is accurate, understood and reasonable.
.33 Through The Provincial Auditor Act, the Assembly requires our Office to carry out our work following generally accepted auditing standards. These professional standards are recommended by The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
.34 We comply with these standards by ensuring all of our staff have the necessary education, training and experience, and by ensuring our work is subject to a rigorous system of quality control.
.35 Almost all of the staff in our Office carry out audit examinations. Our auditors have university degrees, hold professional designations (e.g., Chartered Accountant) or are working towards a professional designation. In addition, we participate in a wide range of training programs because the quality of our work is directly related to the knowledge, skills and abilities of our staff.
.36 Our system of quality control includes internal and external reviews. Internally, experienced professionals supervise more junior staff, our practice review committee ensures our practices keep up with changes in professional standards, and we do annual quality and efficiency reviews of our audit files.
.37 Our external quality control includes seeking advice of industry experts, having officials of other legislative audit offices review our work, and periodic inspections carried out by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Saskatchewan. We publish the results of these inspections in our Annual Report on Operations. We also participate actively in the development of professional standards by providing advice on proposals and by serving on professional committees and task forces.
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A summary of how we discharge our responsibilities to the Assembly
.38 The following is a summary of the information we provide on how we fulfil the responsibilities given to us by the Legislative Assembly.
- We publish a Business and Financial Plan for our Office, and we answer questions posed in public meetings by members of the Board of Internal Economy, the Standing Committee on Estimates and, in the future, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
- We discuss our audit workplans with each government organization.
- We provide reports to the Minister responsible for each government organization on the results of each of our examinations.
- We meet with government officials to discuss the contents of our reports when those reports are still in draft form as well as after those reports are issued.
- We summarize the results of our examinations in a Fall Report, a Spring Report, and in other Reports to the Assembly. These Reports contain our conclusions, recommendations and findings.
These Reports are referred to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. In public meetings, we answer questions posed by this Committee and by government officials about the contents of our Reports.
- An external auditor examines and reports to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on our management systems, practices and reports.
- Our work methods are examined through internal and external quality control reviews.
- We publish an Annual Report on Operations for our Office, including the reports of our external auditor and our external practice inspector.
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.39 Frequently, elected and appointed officials, as well as members of the media and the public, ask us questions or request that we attend meetings to discuss the contents of our reports. We welcome these questions and requests. We consider these questions and requests opportunities to explain how we fulfil our responsibilities to the Assembly.
.40 All of our reports to the Assembly are available to the public. If you wish a copy, please contact us at:
Provincial Auditor Saskatchewan
1500 Chateau Tower
1920 Broad Street
Regina, Saskatchewan
S4P 3V7
Phone: (306) 787-6398
Fax: (306) 787-6383
E-mail: prov.auditor.pas@govmail.gov.sk.ca
Reference
1 Report of the Independent Review Committee on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, page 9, Information Canada, 1975.
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1998.05.13 |