04 October 2013
A recent follow-up report to an external assessment against International Internal Auditing Standards confirms that the Office of the Inspector General’s Audit Unit now “generally conforms with standards”. This means the Audit Unit has matured to the third and highest level of the standards.
The report underlines the considerable progress made in building relationships with the Secretariat. It also recognizes that the Audit Unit has started implementing a range of contemporary practices such as a formal quality assurance and improvement program as well as a more rigorous, risk-based approach to annual audit planning. It has built greater in-house capacity and has reduced significantly the number of outstanding audit recommendations which date back to 2012.
Although the Audit Unit’s policies and processes conform to the highest international standards, some opportunities for improvement still exist. Moving forward, the report recommends that the Audit Unit should consider championing a combined assurance model across the Global Fund in order to coordinate resources and reduce risk across the organization.