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Annual Report 2013-2014

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Summary of the Points of Interest

About Our Report

Annual report cover pageWelcome to our 2013-14 Annual Report, which provides a comprehensive look at our performance and the services we have delivered to meet our desired outcome of an informed Parliament on public sector accountability and performance.

Our annual report is not a report on the results of audits conducted, as this information is tabled separately in Parliament. Rather, it describes the functions and operations of the Office of the Auditor General and presents the audited financial statements and performance indicators for the Office for the year ended 30 June 2014.

The aim is to inform the reader of who we are and what we do as well as providing information of our specific activities, highlights and challenges for the 2013-14 financial year.

This and earlier annual reports are available on our website at www.audit.wa.gov.au.

We are committed to our values of:

Integrity: we conduct our business in an independent, professional and ethical manner. We take an open, honest and fair approach to our stakeholders.

Quality: we improve the performance of the Office and the public sector by working together to manage our resources, our people and our relationships.

People: we respect and value the contribution of our people and encourage a cooperative approach to our work.

Our strategic framework ensures our efforts are focused on achieving our goals and incorporates all business units of the Office. Our framework includes the identification of four key result areas where we have established clear accountabilities and outcomes against which we measure our performance and progress.

This report is structured around our four key result areas:

Our Business Performance: we recognise the need to act on opportunities to improve and enhance the efficiency of our work. We work to shift effort to things that matter. (Page 21 to 34.)

Our Clients: are Parliament, government agencies and the community of Western Australia. We continue to maintain our independence to ensure our credibility. We strive to add value to Parliament and client agencies. (Page 35 to 41.)

Our Products and Services: include independent financial statement audits, performance and compliance audits, assurance reports, certifications and the sharing of knowledge and expertise. We aim to increase opportunities for improvement. (Page 42 to 56.)

Our People: we not only want to meet the standards we expect of others, we want to exceed those standards. We aim to continue to build the capacity of the Office. (Page 57 to 69.)

About Us

Who we are

The Office of the Auditor General is one of the largest audit practices in Western Australia. Our Office is located in central Perth. We audit over 200 organisations each year, and in the past 12 months we completed financial audits on over $192 billion worth of assets.

Ours is a diverse workplace that employs not only auditors, but other people from a range of occupations and disciplines, such as administration, finance, human resources and information resources.

The Office of the Auditor General serves the public interest by providing Parliament with independent and impartial information about public sector accountability and performance. Our auditors deal with agencies that provide services in education, health, community services, natural resource management and economic development.

Auditing is a dynamic process and is linked to the evolving and changing needs of Parliament and audit clients. Our Office is continually refining its approach and quality of its products as we anticipate and respond to the requirements of our clients.

Key relationships

Unlike public sector departments and agencies, our Office does not report to any government minister but reports directly to Parliament as depicted below.

Key Relationships p2

 

Vision and mission p2

Our year at a Glance p3

Highlights 2013-14

International relations encouraged

Helping to build on international relations and share knowledge with our neighbours was something we continued to work on this year.

In late 2013 the Office hosted eight delegates from the Board of Commissioners and senior staff from PTASABRI (Persero) of Indonesia which manages pension and insurance arrangements for the Indonesian Armed Forces Board and police. The delegation, which included very senior military officers sought advice on audit issues associated with superannuation funds. The delegation also requested our assistance in arranging meetings with the Government Employees Superannuation Board (GESB) and the Department of VeteranAffairs (DVA). We also aided the delegation by providing one of our employees as an ‘interpreter’ on their visits to GESB and the DVA.

International delegation visits provide a valuable opportunity to collaborate and showcase the work of our Office, and we look forward to doing more of this in the coming years. Similarly, employee exchanges are a great opportunity to share information and best practices with our fellow audit offices. We recently hosted secondees from the Solomon Islands and British Columbia, and sent one of our employees to the British Columbia Audit Office on secondment.

Indonesian delegates p9

The Office hosted eight Indonesian delegates shown above with three of our staff members.

The impact of our reports

Many of our reports identified fundamental issues facing government but perhaps none more so than ManagingtheImpactof Plantand AnimalPests:AState-wideChallenge.This audit looked at the impact of plants and animals that have been declared as pests, and identified large expectation and performance gaps in terms of government agency activities.

The graph below shows that our reports are downloaded more frequently around the time that we table reports in Parliament.

Figure 1- Reports downloaded in 2013-14 p9

Banksia Hill report

This report was distinct for our Office because it arose after the Inspector of Custodial Services approached us in early 2013 asking if we would look into the redevelopment and expansion of the Banksia Hill Detention Centre as part of his review into the riots that occurred at the centre in January 2013. We assessed the issue against our topic selection criteria and decided that a performance audit of the redevelopment project was warranted.

Although we conducted the reviews separately and reported them separately, we coordinated their delivery to Parliament in order to provide Members of Parliament with a fuller view of issues relating to Banksia Hill.

Banksia Hill picture p10

Use of surveys to broaden our reports

In 2013-14 we markedly increased our use of surveys to enrich our audit findings. We had over 2 000 responses from school principals and teachers relating to our performance audit on the Department of Education’s behaviour management strategies in public schools.

A statewide survey of landowners as part of our ManagingtheImpactof PlantandAnimalPests:AState-wideChallenge audit, resulted in nearly 700 responses from landholders and valuable information. Below is an example of the survey results from this audit.

Figure 2-Pests audit survey p10

Our audit of the governance of boards and committees was supplemented by survey responses from 135 boards, the results of which gave us great confidence in the reliability of the findings we made from our detailed audit of six boards.

Assisting with inquiries

Obtaining the committees’views on our proposed audits and other topics of interest continues to be critical to ensuring that our audits are relevant to Parliament. Where appropriate, our Office assists committees of Parliament in undertaking their inquiries.

Advice we gave in 2013-14 included to:

  • – the Estimates and Financial Operations Committee of the Legislative Council in its inquiry into the Provision of Information to Parliament
  • – the Economics and Industry Committee in its inquiry into the Management of Western Australia’s Freight Rail Network
  • – staff of the Public Administration Committee on matters relating to the costing and pricing of government fees and charges
  • – the Environment and Public Affairs Committee on matters arising from our audit Ensuring Compliance with Conditions on Mining.

Educating and training our employees

On the training and education front, we continue to encourage internal secondments to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing across the business. We had internal rotations from our Financial Audit to our Performance Audit business units and from our Performance unit into our Technical and Audit Quality unit. Professional development is a key focus for us, that is most notably represented by our monthly PD Days that draw upon both internal and external presenters. I am pleased to note that our level of rigour in the technical and professional development of our people has been officially recognised by both CPA and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia, the two key accounting professional bodies in Australia.

Reports review and assessment

Report review and assessment p11

We recently undertook an assessment of the layout of our parliamentary audit reports against those from across Australia and internationally to determine what works best. A new report template was subsequently designed that provides a consistent approach to the visual presentation of all reports, including a standard format for all images and graphs so they are easier to interpret. Other changes include limiting the use of colour, and more clearly highlighting the report’s recommendations and the official agency response, along with a new cover design. This new template was used for the first time for our WaterCorporation: Managementof WaterPipes report tabled on 19 February 2014.The new report template can be viewed in the online ReportsArchive.

 
Page last updated: August 20, 2014

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