TFA&E 7th Meeting

Madrid, Tribunal de Cuentas of Spain, 19-20 May 2016

Draft Summary of agreements

I. The EUROSAI Task Force on Audit & Ethics 7th meeting was held in Madrid, on the 19 and 20 May 2016.

II. The following representatives of SAIs attended the 7th meeting of the TFA&E:

SAI Representatives

Albania Mr. Bujar Leskaj Mr. Luljeta Nano

Ms. Irena Islami

CROATIA Ms. Lidija Pernar

Ms. Anita Materljan CZECH REPUBLIC Mr. Michal Pleticha

EUROPEAN COURT OF AUDITORS Mr. Eduardo Ruiz-García Mr. Fabrice Mercade

Mr. Christophe Lesauvage

former Yugoslav REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA Ms. Natasha Mihailova HUNGARY Mr. Gyula Pulay

ISRAEL Ms. Nomi Avraham ITALY Mr Ermanno Granelli

MALTA Ms. Rebecca Vassallo

MOLDOVA Mr. Aurel Chiosa

POLAND Mr. Jacek Jezierski

Ms. Agnieszka Morawska PORTUGAL

Ms. Helena Abreu Lopes

Ms. Conceição Ventura

Mr. Paulo Costa

ROMANIA Ms. Ioana Boboc

Ms. Maria Klein

RUSSIA Ms. Alisa Surkina

SERBIA Mr. Radoslav Sretenovic

Ms. Natalija Catović

Ms. Iva Vasilić

SPAIN Mr. Enrique Álvarez Tólcheff

Mr. Miguel Ángel Vaz-Serra Melendez

Ms. Karen Ortiz Finnemore

Ms. Alicia Garcila Del Castillo

Ms. Silvia Solanas Alcaide

THE NETHERLANDS Mr. Martin Dees

TURKEY Mr. Yaşar Uzun

UNITED KINGDOM Mr. Mark Burford

The meeting was also attended by Ms. Heidi Paesen, invited expert from the

University of Leuven, Belgium.

III. Agenda

The Agenda for the meeting was adopted and developed as follows:

IV. Results achieved

Under each item of the approved agenda, the following results were

achieved:

1. OPENING OF THE MEETING

The meeting started with the welcome speech by Mr Ramón Álvarez de Miranda Garcia, President of Tribunal de Cuentas of Spain and Secretary General of EUROSAI.

Ms. Helena Abreu Lopes, Chair of the TFA&E, Portugal, made the Introduction to the meeting, informing the participants on the TFA&E objectives and its activities, based on the 2016 TFA&E report to the Governing Board and on the TFA&E Working Plan.

2. TFA&E MEETING WITH THE COLLEAGUES FROM THE SPANISH TRIBUNAL DE CUENTAS

Mr. Eduardo Ruiz Garcia, from the ECA, presented the TFA&E paper “Supporting SAIs to enhance their ethical infrastructure – Part I”.

Mr. Enrique Álvarez Tólcheff, from the SAI of Spain, presented the TFA&E paper “Auditing Ethics in the Public Sector”, based on the following key questions: (i) why should SAIs audit ethics?; (ii) which ethics related issues can SAIs audit?; (iii) how to audit ethics?; (iv) what is the expected impact and results in ethical management?

Mr. Paulo Costa, from the SAI of Portugal, made a presentation about the work that has being developed by OECD in order to approve the new recommendation on the integrity framework, replacing the 1998 OECD Recommendation on Improving Ethical Conduct in the Public Service.

Mr. Jacek Jezierski, from the SAI of Poland, presented the revised ISSAI 30 draft, explaining the objective of the revision, the areas of revision and giving a step-by-step view of the work done so far. He also pointed out the differences between the current ISSAI 30 and the revised ISSAI 30 and presented the structure of the revised ISSAI 30.

A discussion was then held, in small groups, about the main ethical

problems/doubts/dilemmas that the staff of the SAI of Spain faces in their daily work and what sort of support they need. The conclusions of each discussion group were presented to the plenary. The workshop had a quite good level of participation, and, as far as the TFA&E is concerned, achieved the desired objectives: people talked to each other on ethical problems, and in what they consider could be measures to help them cope with related doubts and dilemmas. On the other hand, the inputs of the participants are a very valuable contribution to the array of practices collected by the TFA&E so far. A separate report was prepared on this workshop (see Annex 1).

After this workshop, Mr. Eduardo Ruiz Garcia, from the ECA, presented the TFA&E paper “Supporting SAIs to enhance their ethical infrastructure – Part II”, where good practices are described that can meet some of the concerns expressed during the workshop.

Ms. Lidija Pernar, from the SAI of Croatia, made a presentation with examples of ethics related audits performed by SAIs, namely by referring the Croatian experience.

Mr. Miguel Ángel Vaz-Serra, from the SAI of Spain, made a presentation about methods to audit ethics, mentioning some of the materials from the TFA&E Seminar “Methods and measuring tools to audit ethics”.

3. Working session on TFA&E Goal 1 “Promote ethics as a pillar of SAIs”

Mr. Jacek Jezierski, from the SAI of Poland, continued his morning presentation about the ISSAI 30 review, focusing on the comments made by SAIs during the exposure draft and the cases where further guidance was requested.

The participants were then splitted in two groups, to perform parallel groups’ work. One group discussed GOAL 1, objective 1 of the TFA&E working plan: “Prepare video for raising awareness on the importance of ethics as a pillar of SAIs”, while the other discussed GOAL 1, objective 2: “Strengthen the ethics’ monitoring and control systems in SAIs”. The results of the discussions were presented in plenary in the following day.

As concerns GOAL 1, objective 1, and after discussing several options to proceed in this project, the TFA&E members agreed with the proposal of Mr. Gyula Pulay, from the SAI of Hungary, to suggest the EUROSAI Governing Board to launch a contest. Through this contest, EUROSAI would invite colleagues from SAIs to prepare (a) video(s) on ethics, awarding a prize to the winner. This would fulfil the objectives aimed

by the TFA&E of obtaining videos, would overcome the technical and financial problems faced and would allow ethics awareness to be raised through the activity of preparing the videos itself. A proposal on this contest for the EUROSAI Governing Board was then prepared (see Annex 2).

In what relates GOAL 1, objective 2, the participants concluded that the draft document already prepared by the ECA is a good basis for the work, and decided that it should be a little bit more densified, in order to guide SAIs in the adoption of its main principles in their own institutions. Examples of instruments could be included as annexes to the main document, building on the practices already identified in the TFA&E papers and considering the requests made by SAIs during the ISSAI 30 exposure draft.

4. Continuation of discussion on projects included in the TFA&E Working Plan- Goal 1

Ms. Nomi Avraham, from the SAI of Israel, presented the conclusions of the second Young EUROSAI Conference, held in Israel on 2015. Ms. Agnieszka Morawska, from the SAI of Poland, made a presentation about the Workshop “Ethical challenges in the work of a public auditor”, which she led in the Second YES Conference. Ms. Conceição Ventura, from the SAI of Portugal, made a presentation about the Workshop “Impact of the auditor’s public role on his private life”, which was held by colleagues from the Portuguese Tribunal de Contas in the same YES Conference. Conclusions of these discussions show that the young generation values ethical issues and feels that SAIs should produce further guidance to help them face their daily problems. Those conclusions should be considered in the TFA&E works.

Mr. Gyula Pulay, from the SAI of Hungary, presented the draft program of the TFA&E/GT1 joint seminar that will be held in Hungary next September. The objective of this event is to compare the activities that have been conducted by several groups of EUROSAI and INTOSAI about integrity/ethics and favour synergies and coordination of efforts.

5.

Update information

The representatives from the SAIs of Hungary, Israel, Czech Republic, Moldova, Turkey and Russia updated participants on several ethics related issues concerning their institutions. The issues raised included:

The progress made in the SAI of Hungary to include integrity risks’ assessment in their audit work

The importance of a participative process and of external expert support for a successful implementation of the code of ethics in the SAI of Israel

The efforts of the SAI of the Czech Republic in obtaining a clear mandate to audit public sector self-governing entities, which have been managing to escape control

The importance of ethics control and corruption prevention in the SAI of Moldova’s work

The strong interest of the EUROSAI members that the next Technical Conference to prepare the incoming Congress, to be held in Turkey, includes a workshop about auditing ethics. The SAIs of Turkey and Poland are willing to prepare and deliver this workshop. The SAI of the Netherlands will also consider the possibility of joining

The initiatives taken in the ethics field by the SAI of Russia, including the incorporation of an ethical approach in the INTOSAI Public Procurement Audit Guidelines, which are being prepared by an INTOSAI Task Force chaired by the SAI of Russia.

IDI sent the TFA&E a presentation on its program “SAI’s fighting corruption”. Due to unexpected reasons, they did not manage to participate in the meeting. Ms. Helena Abreu Lopes, from the SAI of Portugal, presented this item, drawing the attention of participants to the expectations of IDI towards contributions of the TFA&E to this program.

Ms. Nomi Avraham, from the SAI of Israel, presented the ISSAI 5700 re-exposure draft, highlighting the possible connections between this document and the TFA&E planned guidelines to audit ethics. She concluded that these documents are both necessary and there must be some overlapping between them, but in each paper the context will be different. Therefore he TFA&E should keep the content of this ISSAI in mind while preparing the guidelines.

6.

Working session on Goal 2 “Promote ethical conduct in public organisations through the SAIs’ audit activities”

Ms. Heidi Paesen, invited expert from the University of Leuven,

Belgium, made a presentation about the use of perception surveys, which can be useful as a methodology for assessing ethical culture in an organisation. Ms. Heidi Paesen gently agreed to share with the Task Force the surveys she presented, as an example on how this tool can be used. She mentioned some pitfalls that should be considered while preparing these surveys, such as using closed questions and considering that respondents will be willing to be honest in their answers only if the results are not to be used for accountability purposes. Mr Gyula Pulay, from the SAI of Hungary, shared with participants some concerns about the use of these surveys in audit work.

Next, Ms. Agnieszka Morawska, from the SAI of Poland, presented the conclusions of the seminar “Methods and measuring tools to audit ethics”, including a draft structure for the guidelines to audit ethics, as a starting point to discuss these guidelines (see Annex 3).

Ms. Lidija Pernar, from the SAI of Croatia, then made an introduction to the discussion on the guidelines to audit ethics.

The session proceeded with Mr. Martin Dees, from the SAI of The Netherlands, who conducted a World Café session on specific topics related to the preparation of the guidelines to audit ethics. The participants discussed the important issues to consider when discussing “Why”, “What”, “Who” and “How” to audit ethics. The contributions made by all the participants in this session will be taken into consideration by the Task Force on the next step of preparing the guidelines.

Next steps and closing of the meeting

As a last point, it was agreed that the planning of the next development stages of pending projects will be detailed in June 2016, following proposal by the leaders of each one of them.

The next meeting of the TFA&E will be held sooner than usual next year, in order to allow projects to be finalised in time for the EUROSAI

Congress. It was envisaged that the meeting should be held probably in February 2017. Offerings of SAIs to host the next meeting will be expected in due time. The representative of the UK NAO informed that there is a possibility that his SAI can offer.

The Chair and all participants strongly thanked the SAI of Spain for having hosted the 7th meeting of the TFA&E and for providing such an effective support to its development. They also praised the good environment and results of the meeting with the Spanish colleagues during the first morning.

The presentations and documents offered by participants during the meeting will be included in the TFA&E website.