PARALLEL AUDIT OF THE NORDIC COOPERATION REGARDING THE ELECTRICITY EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

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• Publié par: Zewyer
• Nombre de lectures: 30
• Langue: English

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EVALUATION REPORT
(LESSONS LEARNED)

PARALLEL AUDIT OF THE NORDIC
COOPERATION REGARDING THE
ELECTRICITY EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS


CONDUCTED BY THE SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS OF
NORWAY, FINLAND AND DENMARK










February 2009















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CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION 2
II. LESSONS LEARNED 2
III. BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION 6

I. Introduction
At the meeting of the Nordic Auditor Generals in Finland in August 2008, the Auditor Generals of the three
countries signed the joint memorandum resulting from the parallel audit of the Nordic cooperation regarding
electricity emergency preparedness. In this connection, it was decided that the working group which
conducted the parallel audit would prepare an evaluation report (‘Lessons Learned’) to serve as guidelines
for future cooperative audits.

II. Lessons learned
The lessons learned from this parallel audit show that attention to the following matters is important for the
conducting of future cooperative audits. The lessons learned appear from the information presented under
the bullet points. A distinction is made between recommendations aimed at the participating Supreme Audit
Institutions (SAI) and recommendations aimed at the working group set up to conduct the audit. The working
group that conducted this parallel audit consisted of a project group from each participating SAI.

It can be concluded that, in the vast majority of areas, the parallel audit followed the recommendations from
the ‘EU Contact Committee and Candidate Countries – Joint Working Group on Audit Activities” and from
1INTOSAI regarding the prerequisites for successful cooperative audits.

Recommendations aimed at the participating Supreme Audit Institutions:

• We recommend that the audit relate to an area material to all the participating Supreme Audit
Institutions. The participating SAIs must have a mutual wish to conduct the cooperative audit.

In this parallel audit, it proved that not all the parties were sufficiently interested in conducting the
audit, see the description of the background and implementation in Section III. Decisions to withdraw
from the cooperative process serve to undermine the work and the value of the results of the parallel
audit, and focus should therefore be on preventing such situations. However, there is no all-round
solution to this problem, as cooperation is based on the voluntary participation of the individual

1 INTOSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (2007): Cooperation Between SAIs, Tips and Examples for
Cooperative Audits.
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Supreme Audit Institutions. In any case, willingness to commit to conducting the audit will always be
crucial to the cooperation. In this regard, it is essential that the audit relates to an area of materiality
to all the participating SAIs, as this reduces the risk of one party withdrawing from the cooperation.

• We recommend drafting an agreement that puts a certain obligation on the SAIs to take part in the
entire examination of the selected audit theme. The agreement could potentially be
confirmed/adopted at the meeting of the Nordic Auditors General. An agreement would define the
working group’s mandate and cooperation methods.

This parallel audit was not based on an agreement signed by the Auditors General. The ‘parallel
audit’ form of cooperation was initially chosen by the working group members, who at the same time
provided a definition of what a parallel audit entails. A parallel audit is a simpler form of cooperation
than a joint audit. A joint audit can run into legal problems such as granting the employees of SAIs in
other countries access to confidential national information.

• We recommend that each country conduct a mini-analysis of the relevance of the theme before
deciding on the audit theme. A joint preliminary study should also be carried out in order to generate
a factual basis for the examination.

In our opinion, such early national mini-analyses strengthen the basis for evaluating the materiality of
the theme, while building up the theme-related competencies of the participating countries’ project
groups.
Although we did not conduct a joint preliminary study, we believe this could contribute to a better
common understanding of the theme and its relevance at the preliminary stages of the parallel audit.
Furthermore, the audit theme should be anchored in risk and materiality assessments conducted in
the participant countries.

• We recommend that the participating SAIs allocate sufficient resources from the very start.
Regardless of the form of cooperation chosen, cooperative audits are more time-consuming than
ordinary audits.

The commencement date of the audit should be agreed to ensure that all the countries can allocate
resources at the time of start-up. Ideally, the same team should work on the audit from start to finish.
The participating countries used a progress plan to agree on the timing of our examination process,
with resources being suitably adjusted along the way. Allowance was made for the fact that
language differences tend to slow down the process of international cooperation. In addition, the
decision-making processes at meetings mean that such cooperation takes longer than a national
audit. This parallel audit took approximately two years. Even so, the national reports were not
finalised simultaneously, which was probably due to a shortage of resources in one of the countries.

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Recommendations aimed at the working group set up to conduct the audit:

• We recommend that consensus be reached on all material issues. Consensus is contingent on
everyone’s willingness to make compromises.

• Early in the process we recommend that the working group clarify the project participants’
interpretation of the mandate for the project. Questions regarding the handling of secretariat
functions, language and language problems should also be dealt with at an early stage.

From the beginning, the Norwegian project group assumed responsibility for the secretariat function,
progress and meeting management. This was instrumental in ensuring the positive outcome of the
parallel audit. The countries took it in turns to host the meetings. The project groups in the
participating countries also kept in regular contact with each other via e-mail and telephone
conferencing. To maintain momentum and reduce the language problems at meetings, it is beneficial
to prepare an outline in advance as a basis for the work. For this parallel audit, we decided to use
Norwegian, Swedish and Danish as our spoken and written languages. We can conclude that
Danish can be difficult to understand, particularly for Swedish-speaking Finns. The situation caused
various problems of understanding, which were resolved only by the mutual goodwill of the
participants and Norwegian mediation. It may be possible to reduce the language difficulties by
selecting a common foreign language (English) as the working language. On the other hand, one of
the unique features of Nordic cooperation is that we can work together in our own languages (with
the exception of Finnish). This can provide a better linguistic basis for spotting details.

• Early in the process, we recommend that the working group clarify whether the national procedures
for publishing the audit product will influence the choice of time and format for publication of the
work.

We had good experiences with establishing at an early stage that the desired product of the parallel
audit should be a joint memorandum that could be incorporated in the various national reports. It
took four months from the finalising of the draft joint memorandum to the first publication in national
audit reports.

• We recommend that the working group collectively establish the audit objective, detailed plan for
issues, and ways of addressing them.

We used a design matrix as a tool to structure our understanding of the connection between
objective, issues, choice of method, potential sources and anticipated findings. The design matrix
was developed as an ongoing process that started before the meeting in Oslo in April 2007 and
continued at this and later meetings. The design matrix reflects the work on the issues. When
formulating the objective/design matrix, the working group acknowledged that we could have used
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more than two consecutive days of meetings. The second day of a three-day meeting could, for
example, have been used for a social event. Sufficient time must be allowed for meetings to make
sure there is also enough time to deal with any language difficulties.

• We recommend using recognised audit standards.

The selection of issues and audit methods should not be too ambitious as the form of cooperation in
itself poses a series of demands that can be difficult to meet. The participating countries must clarify
among themselves any differences in methodological audit approach.
The pa