Auditor-general says office is more efficient

Cape Town - Auditor-general Shauket Fakie said yesterday that his office was starting to concentrate on efficiency and delivery audits as well as rooting out financial mismanagement while working with government agencies to ensure stronger action against fraud and corruption.

This, he said, would reduce duplication of activities in tracking down maladministration, fraud and corruption and the public was encouraged to report all cases to the Public Service Commission's hotline (0800 701 701).

It would, as appropriate, then route complaints to either Fakie's office, the public protector or to internal divisions of the commission for investigation.

Answering questions from parliament's ad hoc committee charged with overseeing his work, Fakie and his deputy, Terence Nombembe, had admitted that they spent most of their time training competent auditors to go through government books.

This meant that their specialist investigations were limited but they had become very aware of the need to broaden the scope of their work to include efficiency and delivery audits.

Fakie said his office "never gets involved in comments on policy itself, but looks at how effective government is in implementing policy".

Performance audits were "a very specialised skill", which his office could not claim to "be at the leading edge" of just yet.

But he was liaising with the offices of several international auditors-general to learn how to develop these skills quickly. Staff trained in these skills were being integrated into audit teams.

Nombembe said a key trend in some of the bigger departments had been the ability to reduce the number of hours spent auditing their financial statements because of audit efficiencies.