By: Gilles Miller

At its General Assembly in Lisbon, Portugal in September 2021, the Forum of Jurisdictional SAIs adopted a set of guidelines designed to publicize and promote the exercise of jurisdictional and contentious missions by SAIs vested with this competence. These guidelines provide and illustrate in very concrete terms the frame of reference for this exercise in conditions of independence, objectivity or neutrality, legal rigor, public interest and fairness in line with the highest international standards.

The INTOSAI Core Principles are at the pinnacle of INTOSAI’s professional pronouncements, just behind the Lima and Mexico Declarations, which represent the “Magna Carta” of external government auditing and define the conditions for its independent and effective functioning. To date in 2024, there are three: one is devoted to the value and benefits that SAIs bring to citizens (INTOSAI-P 12), another to transparency and accountability (INTOSAI-P 20), and the third sets out the 12 principles that should guide the actions of SAIs with jurisdictional powers, in the exercise of their functions.

There are three main models of SAIs in the world, and several variants. They have a very long history, dating back in some cases to the Middle Ages, but all three were renewed and developed between the 18th century and the beginning of the following century, when modern states were established.