Our First Summarized Audit Report: Launch and Publication

Two weeks ago, on March 31^st, 2021, we launched our first Summarized Audit Report (Citizens Audit Report) to promote accessible and to ease understanding  of our work, especially our annual reports on the accounts of the Government of The Gambia. This new strategy, among several other upcoming ones will help us publicize the findings in our report in simple, and visualized language. It is also a step towards achieving our strategic plan outputs. The first version was on the audit report on the 2016 financial statements of the accounts of the Government of The Gambia.

Since October 2020, we have been working with Gambia Participates to identify the best ways to cut down a document of over 250 pages with over 50 findings that are still relevant into a short and simple version that citizens can understand. Doing this we focused on:

• Unresolved issues that are currently relevant on the topic of public resource and financial management in The Gambia
• Findings and recommendations that will be most relevant for citizens to read and pursue accountability of public resource utilization.
• Means of shortening the report to achieve its main purpose.

The virtual launch event was attended by our strategic government partners such as Ministries, Agencies and Departments, National Assembly, AFROSAI-E, other peer SAIs and our funding partner IDI. During the event opening, the Auditor General expressed: ”One of the reasons we are excited about the Summarized Audit Report is its ability to reach a wider demographic of Gambian citizens. As we are aware of the literacy levels of Gambians, we hope that this summary will at least help in understanding all the reports we publish which will also facilitate implementation of our recommendations.”

After the presentation of the report content, purpose and how our stakeholders can utilize it, we welcomed our partners to share what it meant working on this crucial communication product over the past few months. The NAO Director of Audit responsible for Ministries and Departments shared specific audit-related challenges that impacts the audit process, discussion of reports and ultimately publication which is especially important for media and civil society.

Marr Nyang, who is the Executive Director for Gambia Participates and who has shown great interest in working and partnering with our office to strengthen financial reporting management, shared that: “We plan to strengthen our partnership with the NAO in ensuring that the media and civil society have access to the key findings that the report highlights without having to scroll through 100 pages. We also hope that this will in turn prompt action from government and the National Assembly in the implementation and action over reports.” Marr furthered shared how this strategy and NAO’s performance in citizen-friendly communication activities can serve as a tool for boosting The Gambia’s assessment levels on transparency and accountability in global conversations.

We closed off the event hearing from Dana Wilkins, IDI Project Manager, our funding partner who shared her experiences in working with us and providing financial and peer-support resources and network through the PAP-APP project. Dana shared that “The NAO has a five-year strategic plan that sets its big picture priorities especially in engaging more and better with key stakeholders like civil society, media and citizens of The Gambia. The plan is also further complemented by a communications plan and strategy that details the office’s approach to producing more citizen-friendly products like this summarized report, video explainers, social media, radio and community engagements”. Dana believes that aside filling in critical financial resources, development partners could also tap into their networks of people, ideas, and experiences for related citizen engagement programming. With this, IDI is prioritizing communication in its second peer-support phase starting in 2021.

The report is now live on our website and can be downloaded, utilized, and shared. As this first version is more of a test document, we are collecting feedback to incorporate in the development of future reports, especially the 2017 and 2018 summarized audit reports that will hopefully be published soon. Remember to send us your feedback on suggestions@nao.gm.