Tag: USA

I hope this message finds you, your colleagues, and families in good health and high spirits. I would like to thank you for your continued support, contributions, and interest in the INTOSAI Journal. As Journal President, I am most grateful for your ongoing efforts to help us deliver timely, informative, and helpful content for the INTOSAI community and our key stakeholders.

After 40 years of conducting its International Auditor Fellowship Program (fellows program) in-person, the U.S….

The Government Accountability Office—the United States Supreme Audit Institution—established its Innovation Lab in 2019 as a research entity dedicated to exploration and experimentation of data science techniques and emerging technologies. The goal is to amplify GAO’s oversight capabilities across the evolving web 3.0 landscape. The INTOSAI Journal recently joined the Lab for a tour of the facility at GAO headquarters where an entrepreneurial team of data scientists, technologists, and analysts come together collaboratively across a portfolio of novel projects ranging from deployment of large language models to use of extended reality.

The International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) presented the Jörg Kandutsch Award at the…

In recent years, Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) have increasingly seen the value in engaging with civil society as a way to enhance government accountability and the quality of their audits. While we regularly engage with civil society during the normal course of our work, at no time has this been more important than during global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic that we all have experienced for going on three years.

Greetings and Happy New Year to the INTOSAI community from the International Journal of Government Auditing. The Journal Board of Directors and staff look forward to continuing our constructive, collegial, and informative engagement with the INTOSAI community in 2022 and beyond. I am very excited to announce that…

In a major show of support, INTOSAI provided funding to Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) to help with continuity of operations during the pandemic. Under the leadership of Dr. Hussam Alangari, Auditor General of Saudi Arabia, and Mr. Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, the “SAI Continuity during COVID-19” grant funded the purchase of…

With governments around the world spending massive sums to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) have a key role to play in detecting and preventing fraud. To share knowledge and best practices, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) held an international webinar on September 15, 2021, on “Auditing for Fraud: Experiences, Tools and Techniques, and Looking Ahead.” The virtual event, which attracted approximately 260 attendees, was…

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires, have the potential to devastate people’s everyday lives by causing injuries and death, destroying homes and infrastructure, and wreaking economic havoc. From 2000 through 2019, there were 7,348 major disaster events worldwide, which claimed 1.23 million lives, affected 4.2 billion people (many more than once), and resulted in approximately U.S. $2.97 trillion in global economic losses. Governments usually lead recovery efforts by…

Among the many drastic changes wrought by the COVID-19 crisis has been the sudden shift to a virtual work environment. At the start of the pandemic, some audit offices had already made significant strides toward enabling remote work, while others conducted work primarily in-person, whether to build a collaborative work culture, ensure safe handling of sensitive documents, or due to limited information technology infrastructure or other reasons. The pandemic has presented..

The rapidly evolving pace of AI makes it necessary to establish a framework to independently verify AI systems (even as the technology continues to advance). The global accountability community needs a toolkit to evaluate this ever-changing technology, and, more importantly, organizations that build, purchase, and deploy AI need a framework to understand how AI systems will be evaluated. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), recognizing the urgent need for AI governance…

On May 25, 2021, Mr. Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, led a virtual discussion group on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 30 organizations—including INTOSAI organizations and 21 Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs), donor and civil society organizations, and United Nations organizations and observers—contributed to the dialogue. The group stems from…

Making informed planning decisions early in the audit process is key to completing audits in a timely manner. Many teams use historical information to determine how long an audit will take. But every audit and every audit organization is different, so it is impossible to…

On April 7, 2021, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) held the first in a series of free international webinars to promote knowledge sharing and address emerging issues the INTOSAI community is facing during the pandemic. More information about the webinar series can be found here. The topic of the first webinar was the challenges and lessons learned in conducting real-time audits of COVID-19 activities. The webinar featured…

On September 30, 2020, GAO’s CAE marked its fifth anniversary, having made significant progress in expanding GAO capabilities to build audit capacity and promote good governance around the country and around the world. The CAE, which reports to GAO’s Strategic Planning and External Liaison (SPEL) office, provides…

Combating fraudsters has long been a persistent challenge for governmental entities. While there are no precise figures, fraudulent activities drain billions of taxpayer dollars each year from vital programs. In today’s digitally-connected, information-driven world…

The behavioral economics field has developed valuable insights on when (and how) people make systematic errors in decision-making due to cognitive biases and fallacies. These insights can deepen the understanding of various factors affecting decision-making and are particularly important to audit work, which aims to…

The COVID-19 Pandemic has posed significant challenges to public health, the global economy, our governments, Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs), and the citizens we serve. As an independent, non-partisan, objective agency, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) provides oversight of the federal response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. GAO has…