Familiarisation visit of final year journalism students at the National Audit Office (Malta)

For the third consecutive year, in line with our NAO outreach programme, this morning four journalism students accompanied by Dr Natalino Fenech, Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Creative Art, within MCAST, had a most interesting and informative meeting with me and my colleague, William Peplow, Assistant Audit Manager and Head of our Performance Audit team.
During this familiarisation visit, William and I essentially highlighted the most salient features and aspects of our public sector audit work, focusing especially on the need to duly safeguard our Office’s credibility by invariably basing our work on the fundamental auditing values of objectivity, truth and evidence-based reporting. I also emphasised that the main objective of our work is to support and enhance good governance across the public sector; for this reason, we collaborate extensively with other offices of review, also set up in terms of the Constitution, like, just to quote one example, the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

In response to one of the questions raised by a student, William made reference to the risk framework model that has been developed within the NAO, by him and his Action Plan team, to essentially support our professional judgement when we are formulating our Audit Plan for the following year.
 
At the end of the meeting, Dr Fenech conveyed his appreciation to the Auditor General for his availability and collaboration during these annual familiarisation visits.