LAUNCHING OF 2017 TRAINING ACTIVITIES AND TRAINING WORKSHOP ON VERIFICATION METHODOLOGY FOR SERVICE INSPECTORS OF MINISTRIES

YAOUNDE, CREFIAF TRAINING HALL, 06 to 17 March 2017.

ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER DELEGATE AT THE PRESIDENCY OF THE REPUBLIC IN CHARGE OF THE SUPREME STATE AUDIT OFFICE

• The Secretary General of the Supreme State Audit Office;

• The Internal Auditor;

• The Permanent Secretary of the Budget and Finance Disciplinary Board (BFDB),

• The Technical Advisers;

• The Heads of Division and those ranking as such,

• The State Inspectors;

• Services Inspectors;        

• Dear Collaborators;

• Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honored to take the floor this morning in the CREFIAF training hall of the Supreme State Audit Office, on the occasion of the launching ceremony of CONSUPE training activities programme for the year 2017, and the opening of the Training Workshop on Audit Methodology, organized for Service Inspectors of seventeen (17) Ministries.

I wish, first of all, to begin by thanking the Heads of ministerial departments for having accepted to release their close collaborators, Inspectors of Services, in order to participate in the Training Workshop which opens this morning, and which comes after the one held at the same venue in November 2016, to the benefit of other ministerial departments.

To you, the Service Inspectors present here, I wish a warm welcome to the Supreme State Audit Office.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly three months after the colourful and festive ceremony of new year wishes presentation which brought together the whole CONSUPE family, it is with renewed joy and even greater pleasure that I meet you here, in this den of knowledge, namely the CREFIAF training hall, on the occasion of this ceremony which, as I said earlier, is first of all dedicated to the launching of CONSUPE 2017 training activities.

A ceremony to launch training activities within a Supreme Audit Institution is a unique event, on its own.

In fact, if it recalls the importance of capacity building for a SAI performance, such a meeting is also the right place to exchange on cardinal values and standards, without which auditing would lose its specificity to become an ordinary activity.

That is why I have chosen to entertain you today about two central concepts of auditing which, according to me, seem to be the backbone and the cornerstone of this job: professionalism and its corollary, competence.

Indeed, the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI) define verification as an activity carried out by an independent and competent professional who evaluates information or a system in order to assess the measure in which the information or system complies with a prescribed standard or benchmark.

In proposing this definition to clarify the meaning of this notion, the standard-setter wanted to put professionalism at the center of the auditor's job. He made it the keystone of his profession, the pledge of the credibility of his/her work results.

In fact, professionalism is a set of skills, knowledge, know-how and attitudes that underpin and regulate the actions of people who aspire to practice their profession with nobility. It is a rigorous attitude at work, concerning work, work tools, the rules set at work, and the people you meet in the course of your job. It is therefore the permanent concern to do one's job to the best of one's ability, to achieve the organization's objectives optimally and to the greatest satisfaction of its customers.

In the field of verification, professionalism has a special connotation, which is amplified by a sufficiently rigid normative corpus, increasingly stringent environmental requirements, and continuously improving work methods.

Indeed, in auditing, professionalism is not an option but an obligation. As an auditor, you cannot choose to be professional or not. One must be professional or stop being an auditor!

Compliance with such a requirement presupposes above all the knowledge, better, mastery at the fingertips of the rules and norms that govern this profession that makes those who exercise it, nothing less than privileged persons. For, on their shoulders lies the heavy responsibility of controlling, detecting and revealing with implacable objectivity, absolute rigor, and using dedicated techniques and with irreproachable impartiality, discrepancies between facts, and not opinions or intuitions, on the one hand, and objective, and not subjective, standards, on the other hand.

At the Supreme State Audit Office, the Cameroon Supreme Audit Institution, these rules are contained in the Decree relating to mobile audit missions. This Decree clearly states what the auditors of this Institution must do, are allowed to do, and by deduction, what they should not do, and are not allowed to do. These rules also include international audit standards in the public sector, the ISSAIs, which are the lantern that guides the auditor's actions and behavior, the benchmark against which their professionalism is assessed.

That is why both tools should constitute the pocket and bedside book of auditors of Cameroon SAI. The latter must use it, not as a decorative object, but as a parchment to read, again and again, in order to make it the matrix of their action, a manifest and daily reality in the performance of their duties, and the conduct of their life in society.

However, dear collaborators, ladies and gentlemen, as you certainly understood, professionalism, without its corollary, competence, is nothing. Yes, if by your professionalism you say to yourself what you are and how you must behave towards others, by your competence, it is others who see what you are in reality, and how they should behave towards you.

Through competence, you show and demonstrate your knowledge and your know-how, and thus, earn the respect of your interlocutor. Thanks to it, I said, you give traceability to your work, credibility to your methods, robustness to your results, and meaning to your status as an auditor.

That is to say, Ladies and Gentlemen, if it is true that by a decree, the Supreme Head of the Supreme State Audit Institution, in this case, His Excellency Paul BIYA, conferred on you the grade of State Inspector, State Controller or Assistant Auditor, it is more equally true that only competence, acquired and conquered in the permanent quest for excellence, will make you an accomplished auditor who deserves the confidence placed in you.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The principles of professionalism and competence thus developed apply equally to the auditors of CONSUPE and to the Internal Auditors of Public Administrations, Service Inspectors being the main concerned here.

To these Internal Auditors, I am pleased to remind that the process of their professional capacity building is part of CONSUPE's missions to supervise internal audit bodies in public administrations.

This supervision is reflected concretely through not only the popularization of international auditing standards and principles, as published by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) and other related professional organizations, but also by sharing new verification methods and techniques, as well as harmonizing audit reports drafting techniques, in accordance with international standards.         

Training workshops, such as the one I am pleased to open this morning, are therefore indispensable for harmonizing verification and reports drafting techniques between the Supreme State Audit Institution, the External Audit Body, and its correspondents within the Ministries, General Inspections, which are by essence Internal Audit Bodies. This harmonization aims to ensure that we all speak the same language in the practice of public sector auditing.

Our approach is both necessary and appropriate because, as an external audit body, the Supreme Audit Institution is the recipient of audit reports from General Inspectorates, for the purpose of using them within the framework of its control missions and/or proceedings before the Budget and Finance Discipline Board.

On this last point, it is important to note that the conclusions of internal audit bodies, following investigations and verification missions, sometimes appear to be inoperative due to the non-harmonization of auditing standards, and investigative techniques, and especially the collection of evidence to support reports. This situation makes it difficult to use these reports in the context of, for example, proceedings before the B.F.D.B.

The training workshop, which is initiated for the benefit of Service Inspectors, aims to remedy this situation. It is intended to provide participants with practical knowledge and skills in audit methodology, including planning, execution and drafting of audit reports.

Dear Collaborators,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The dual dimension of today's ceremony has been stressed enough, namely:

• on the one hand, the launching of CONSUPE training activities programme for the year 2017;

• and on the other hand, the opening of the training workshop on audit methodology for the Service Inspectors of 17 ministries.

I would now like to close my remarks and address in particular the Service Inspectors present as participants in this training, as well as the trainers and facilitators of the training.

Always keep in mind that by providing this training to you, the main objective of the Supreme State Audit Office is to make a qualitative leap in our professional auditing practices.

I urge you, therefore, to be regular and committed in the workshop deliberations that begin this morning.

Get personally involved in the discussions, so as to make them mutually beneficial. It is by so doing that you will be able to acquire and truly own the various tools required to carry out audit work.

 It is also at this cost that you will be able to draft or contribute to the production of quality audit reports that comply with standards in the domain, quality reports that build or reinforce the image and the credibility of any regulatory body.

As for you, distinguished instructors and facilitators, selected for the Training Workshop, I am also expecting you, beyond the effective mobilization of your expertise and experience already confirmed, and the unwavering availability to the participants, so that all of our set objectives are fully met.

This said, I declare officially launched the 2017 Training Activities Programme of the Supreme State Audit Office and open the Training Workshop on Audit Methodology organized for the Service Inspectors of 17 government departments.

 

Thank you for your kind attention!