Main findings Performance audit

2.3.1 Main findings

Our main finding was that the Performance Audit Implementation Guidance complied with applicable laws and regulations. It also agreed with intosai and asosai guidelines. The Implementation Guidance provides auditors with a clear step-by-step approach from planning to reporting. It clearly states the relationship between the various activities in the audit process and the documents used to report findings, conclusions and recommendations and establish an audit trail. The Implementation Guidance provides and secures a systematic approach that enables uniformity and quality control measures to function properly. The Implementation Guidance provides general information on what performance auditing is and its aims. It also gives a brief description of important concepts such as economy, efficiency and effectiveness, illustrated with examples. The Implementation Guidance describes the basic competences that performance auditors should have. Even though the selected performance audits were conducted before the Implementation Guidance had been formally adopted, they complied with the requirements of the Implementation Guidance. However, we believe the Implementation Guidance should be further improved with regard to the scope, methodology and challenges of performance auditing to better support bpk’s auditors when conducting performance audits. This support is needed in our opinion because performance auditing is a relatively new activity not only for the auditors but also for bpk ’s management and Board. Our review of the selected performance audits found that the auditors used the financial audit methodology and the audit design and fieldwork focused on compliance rather than achievement of policy goals. Supervision, quality controls and quality assurances also did not encourage the auditors to focus on the performance of government and on the final impact on the Indonesian population. In appendix iv we look in greater detail at our suggestions to improve the Implementation Guidance further. In the following sections we present more detailed findings regarding general conditions, planning, fieldwork and reporting of performance audits.

2.3.2 General conditions