In a major paradigm shift in the audit methodology by the country’s audit watchdog CAG, not only the Ministries but Ministers, too, will come under the ambit of ‘audit’ of their departments concerned, which so far remained confined only to the bureaucracy or the executive system.
Sources in the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said that for years the accounting and audit details used to be an examination of accounts between CAG and officers of the concerned department but from now onwards, after the change in policy, CAG will give an opportunity to the political executives as well to have their say, if any, to avoid any confusion at a later stage.
“CAG outreach is now being extended to include political executives to highlight audit concerns. The intention is to build a shared understanding of the most pressing concerns in governance and find possible solutions,” the Comptroller and Auditor General, GC Murmu, had said earlier.
Sources said that while the all departments be it Centre or State/UTs have to undergo audit from the CAG, now it will be also the responsibility of the auditor as well the concerned minister or political executive to share/divulge the required accounting information.
“The political executive how so ever high will have to cooperate according to the new charter of this constitutional body. This we are doing for more effective and greater transparency in the system at all level and channels,” explained a senior CAG official. Under this now a range of Council of Ministers will also be audited for the responsibilities they owe.
In the recent times the CAG has also been working overtime to scan all kind of tenders, media reports of major projects based on which the audit watchdog prepare itself to move ahead to check the details and the probabilities of the projects at the costing evaluated.
The CAG also announced for full operationalisation of the One IAAD One System (OIOS) workflow system in the audit offices effective from April 1, 2023. Presiding over an event on Friday, Murmu declared that “from tomorrow (Saturday) onwards, all new audit work in our institution will take place only through OIOS and physical paper-based workflow must cease. From tomorrow onwards, the digitisation process would be irreversible”. OIOS is an enterprise wide end-to-end IT application. OIOS is web-enabled solution with support for multiple languages with offline functionality and a mobile app. The OIOS roll out process involved work relating to master data, audit design, audit execution, legacy data migration, knowledge management system, quality assurance, quality control, audit products, communication and follow-up.
“The institution of the CAG has always been one of the first Government organizations to adopt new technology in its working model. Be it digitizing the accounting and entitlement process, adopting IT enabled audit, using data analytics in facilitating audit, work flow automations, OIOS is a step in that direction which strengthens our Audit officers to continue to provide independent and credible assurance on public resources and be a global leader in public sector auditing,” Murmu said.