On September 15, 2022, the delegation of the State Audit Office of Viet Nam (SAV) led by Deputy Auditor General Vu Van Hoa paid a working visit to the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation (CAAF), the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario. The mission lies within the framework of cooperation between the SAV and the CAAF in order to share experiences and improve the capacity of SAV in performance auditing.
The delegation of the State Audit Office of Viet Nam takes a photo with the leaders of CAAF.
On September 19, 2022, the Delegation had a working session with CAAF, including Ms. Caroline Jorgensen, Vice President of CAAF, its management board and the experts. The two sides exchanged views on cooperation orientation, activities expected to be implemented from now to 2025 in the context of the "new normal" after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The CAAF's international program, funded by the Government of Canada, aims to assist Supreme Audit Institutions and Parliamentary Oversight Committees to improve performance audit capacity; enhance effectiveness; support accountability and governance functions in developing countries. CAAF has carried out the program internationally since 1980 and has assisted more than 50 Supreme Audit Institutions in Africa, Asia and America.
The topics discussed during the meeting cover the results of reviewing the agreements in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2019 between the two sides; the additional proposals of mainstreaming the topics into the cooperation program including gender equality; involvement of audited entities; collection and analysis of audit evidence; the oversight of the National Assembly; the 9-month fellowship program in Canada.
The representatives of SAV presented its current situation of performance audit development; SAV - CAAF cooperation relationship; SAV’s Action plan of Development Strategy to 2030 on the development of performance audit,... Thereby, the two sides set out achievable goals against SAV’s Action Plan and the MOU.
Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Auditor General of Viet Nam Vu Van Hoa highly appreciated CAAF's support for the SAV over the past time, especially in strengthening its capacity of performance audit. Since the cooperation relationship was established in 2008, CAAF has been supporting the SAV to develop performance audit through outstanding activities such as developing regulations and guidelines on performance audit; organizing training courses and workshops on performance audit; supporting the establishment of the performance audit divisions within SAV; carrying out performance audits. In addition, CAAF also supported SAV in the establishment and improvement of the Working group on performance audit consisting of 16 members led by Deputy Auditor General Vu Van Hoa. Acting as SAV's focal point in connection with CAAF, the Working group also implements the Performance Audit (PA) Development Program for the period of 2018-2025 sponsored by CAAF.
For future SAV-CAAF cooperation, Mr. Vu Van Hoa suggested that CAAF continue to carry out specific activities to support SAV’s achievement of the objectives of PA development under SAV Development Strategy to 2030, of which the priority objectives are focusing on improving the quality of the audits; building and developing high-quality human resources. SAV wishes to change its approach from integrating PA in most of the audits of the state budget, money and assets to conducting independent performance audits, and building condense, flexible, practical PA divisions for sustainable PA development. It also focuses on intensive training in performance audit, environmental audit and information technology audit at home and abroad to build a core team as a focal point for research, implementation, training and technology transferring throughout the organization. In particular, training must be emphasized on the new contents of PA for future audits such as audit of gender equality, audit of the implementation of sustainable development goals, etc.