Follow up Reports by NAO 2020 Vol 2

The Auditor General, Mr. Charles Deguara, presented to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Anglu Farrugia, the second volume of follow-up reports for 2020, comprising the results of six follow-up reports relating to audits conducted in the past few years.

International Standard for Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI), ISSAI 12 – “The Value and Benefits of Supreme Audit Institutions – making a difference to the lives of citizens” refers to the critical requirement that ‘national audit institutions should have appropriate mechanisms for following up audit findings and recommendations’.

Thus, in line with the above international auditing standard and in compliance with established best practice, the National Audit Office (NAO) has once again identified a number of audits carried out in recent years with the objective of following up the extent of implementation of the main recommendations that had been made in the original audit reports.

An analysis on the degree of implementation of this Office’s recommendations was undertaken on the following past Performance and IT audits:

• Maintaining and Repairing the Arterial and Distributor Road Network in Gozo
• Managing and Monitoring the State Schools’ Transport Service
• An evaluation of the regulatory function of the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations
• Protecting Consumers through the Market Surveillance Directorate’s Monitoring Role
• Jobs Plus IT audit
• Commerce Department IT audit

NAO notes that, in the case of the audits included in this Report, 66% of our recommendations were either fully implemented or very significant progress was made thereon. 25% of the recommendations were partly implemented. Thus, a total of 91% of our recommendations were implemented to varying degrees. On the other hand, 9% of the recommendations were not implemented or little progress was made.