In the invitation of the Secretary General and the Chair of the Committee on Knowledge Sharing (KSC) of the ASEAN Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASEANSAI), the State Audit Office of Viet Nam (SAV) has sent delegations to participate in a series of ASEANSAI virtual events from September 8th to 9th, 2020, namely: the first meeting of the Task Force on ASEANSAI legal capacity, the second periodic meeting of ASEANSAI KSC and the INTOSAI Development Initiative - IDI-ASEANSAI Joint Webinar on Strengthening SAI Audits of Sustainable Development Goals Implementation.
The SAV delegation participated in the virtual events
There were Senior Leaders and representatives of the 10 ASEANSAI members participating in such events. From the SAV, Mr Hà Minh Tuấn, Deputy Director General of International Cooperation was the head of the delegations.
In the afternoon of September 8th, 2020, the first meeting of the Task Force on ASEANSAI legal capacity was held with the aim of realising the issues agreed in the 5th ASEANSAI Assembly in Malaysia from November 4th to 7th, 2019 in respect of supplementing articles on ASEANSAI legal capacity which may lead to the revision of the agreement on the establishment of this regional Organisation. In the meeting, SAIs have chance to listen to the presentation of ASEANSAI Secretariat on the Terms of Reference on the Task Force. Accordingly, the Task Force shall be comprised of the following members: ASEANSAI Secretariat, Chair of the KSC (SAI Malaysia), Chair of the Training Committee (SAI Philippines), Chair of the Rules and Procedures Committee (SAI Singapore) and Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee (SAI Viet Nam). The members have responsibility to develop a research on the actual situation of the ASEANSAI legal capacity, then provide the recommendations to narrow the gap between the present status and the expected ones, including how to revise the Agreement on ASEANSAI establishment. The members also discussed and reached consensus on the action plan to finalise the research, toward the 6th ASEANSAI Assembly in Myanmar to adopt the revised Agreement on the establishment.
Representatives of ASEANSAI members to participate in the virtual events
In the morning of the following day, September 9th, 2020, the 2nd KSC meeting was held to discuss and decide on the key matters of the Committee’s work plan for 2020, the orientation of the next year plan implementation and solutions for tackling the challenges faced the members. As the lead SAI of “the Cooperative Audit on Water Resources Management in Mekong River Basin in alignment with the SDGs implementation” which is under the KSC work plan for the two consecutive years 2020-2021, the SAV made a presentation on the TOR of the audit. The SAV, in this regard, would take the responsibility to lead and coordinate the audit; promote the effective cooperation with the international experts supporting for the conduct of the audit; form a close link with the participating SAIs in order to ensure the effectiveness and high quality of the audit; oversight the compliance with the schedule set in the Action Plan; host the experience-sharing workshop by the end of the audit to publicise the audit results and with SAIs showing interest in the topic to share the good practices in auditing the SDGs-related environmental/performance audits (if any). The participating SAIs (SAIs Myanmar and Thailand), on the other hand, would take charge of, under the coordination of the Lead SAI and in cooperation with the experts/consultants, carrying out their own audits in line with the overall objectives.
In the afternoon of the same day, September 9th, 2020, 08 representatives of the SAV attended the webinar on the SDGs audit model co-jointly held by IDI and ASEANSAI. The webinar is one of the key activities in the ASEANSAI work plan for 2020-2021, for which, it attracted interest of 135 representatives of all ASEANSAI members. In the webinar, some member SAI, such as một SAI Malaysia and Indonesia, etc... shared their experience in auditing the SDGs against the background of COVID-19 pandemic. IDI, also in the webinar, introduced the SDGs Audit Model of which the objective wa to support member SAIs to apply this model in their actual work, toward greater contributions to the INTOSAI mutual effort to audit the SDGs implementation./.