Events

From November 16-26th, 2020, the National Audit Office (NAO) staff started our 2021 Operational Planning workshop at the office’s auditorium in Kanifing. This operational plan was the second one held to facilitate the implementation of the Strategic Development Plan of 2020 – 2024 of the NAO in a more focused and monitored strategy. This activity is supported by INTOSAI Development Institute (IDI) with additional peer and external support from other Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs).

The planning process was led and organized by the Operational Planning Team (OPT) comprised of seven staff that represented the various units across the office, and a total number of 65 staff participated at different times depending on the sessions.

The workshop sessions mainly focused on and were divided into general discussions for staff to share lessons, scrutinize and provide solutions on various aspects of our audit work. Some of the discussions were around major challenges such as the audit backlogs that the office faces, and also provision of solutions on the other pressing challenges. At the end of these discussions, implementation measures around the solutions meant  that when resolved will facilitate our work and improve public accountability in the use of public resources. To enhance collaboration and participation in the process, we held a general discussion with all unit representatives, management, and other social and corporate services staff  including non-audit related topics such as communications. Separately, the various audit units also engaged in discussions to influence their audit universe plans reflecting on their experiences and outcome of the previous year’s plan. At the end, all the units including the Strategic Priorities presented on their plans and then received feedback and scrutiny from the OPT team and other workshop participants. While developing our 2021 operational plan, we again focused on how we can keep these plans measurable and aligned with our SDP 2020-2024 by assessing our lessons from the previous year. For instance, results derived from previous year’s plan showed that some of the units were too ambitious with their targets and plans for 2020. Therefore, most of the unit assignments have been rolled over to the 2021 plan due to lack of resources and the many limitations and mobility challenges that the COVID-19 measures had on the office’s work.

From last year’s lessons and moving forward with our SDP, here are some long-term solutions we will prioritize:

• Be more realistic about rotation in the audit plan
• Build stakeholder understanding and capacity of our work and role
• Advocate for a clear and simple financial reporting framework
• Engage development partners for support and collaboration 

You can download and read our 2020-2024 SDP here.