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Fellow Name: Thang Huu Nguyen

Country: Vietnam

Fellow’s home audit office: State Audit Office of Vietnam

Title: Auditor

Canadian Host Office: Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Decoration Color: Red

Profile Headshot:

My Fellowship:

My Canadian placement:

Office of the Auditor General (OAG) of British Columbiaa

My Canadian audit team:

I was part of a team auditing the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, led by Principal Gabriel Lombardi.

My most valuable learning:

Engagement skills. This includes both engaging auditees and engaging team members. Engagement skills, in my perspective, are key to the success of an audit project.

How my Canadian colleagues and mentors helped me:

They are really professional, and they helped me to learn how to conduct a performance audit in practice. My mentor gave me useful instruction and comments on my personal audit project. I really appreciated their time and their patience.

What I enjoyed most:

Equality everywhere.

No barriers when communicating with each other, all words were always respected, all questions were answered.

My audit plan:

I developed my audit plan project with the guidance of my mentor, Principal Kimberley Leach of OAG Canada.

The connection to my country’s development priorities:

My audit project will look at agricultural vocational training for rural labourers in Binh Phuoc Province.

Training for rural workers in agriculture helps vulnerable groups, such as poor households, ethnic minorities, and those with disabilities, to get jobs and increase their income, and boosts the local economy in new, green and modern agriculture.

This audit is most related to Vietnam’s target 4.4, under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, to “substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship”, and target 5.7, under SDG 5, to “ensure that all women, particularly poor women in rural areas and women from ethnic minority groups, have equal rights to economic resources and equal rights to use land and own other forms of property, inheritance, financial services and natural resources as provided for by national law”.

How CAAF and my host office helped:

The courses provided new knowledge of performance audit, and my mentor’s instruction helped me apply the knowledge to my audit plan. Furthermore, my audit plan was better after I participated in challenge sessions because they helped me realize some important things to add.

The skills and knowledge I improved by developing this plan:

I learned how to scope an audit effectively and how to develop an audit logic matrix. In the future, this will help me to avoid unexpected issues when conducting an audit.

My future impact:

The new knowledge I’m most excited to share with my colleagues:

I’ll be happy to share all I learned, but especially mainstreaming of gender equality in audits. This will be a new lens at my office.

The difference I hope to make:

Performance audits always focus on value added. Consideration of gender equality and SDGs lenses in auditing will have a great impact on implementing commitments to citizens and international goals.

In the long term, audits that include gender issues and the SDGs are certain to contribute to improving our Administration’s performance and creating the conditions for harmonious and sustainable development.

My professional goals:

I hope to build a professional team in performance audit in my office, supporting more auditors to come together to deepen their insights and knowledge of performance audit.

My Experience Part 1:

The most Canadian thing I did was…

Skiing, watching a hockey game, and having Tim Hortons coffee.

My favourite cultural experience in Canada was…

Fun activities at cultural festivals and events.

Something few Canadians know about my country is…

Vietnamese street food is really delicious and cheap. You can spend $1 CAD and be full and happy.

 

My Experience Part 2:

My Fellowship experience in one sentence:

My Fellowship experience is an important milestone for my professional career and also for my life.

My Fellowship in a single word:

Meaningful.

Now that I have completed the Fellowship…

I’m happy to share how valuable Fellowship is.

Two experience images (2022-2023):

Gender: Female

Thang holds a Master of Science degree in economics from Queen Mary University of London. He has worked at the State Audit Office of Vietnam (SAV) for more than four years and is currently assigned to Specialized Audit Department No III. At the SAV, he has mostly performed financial-compliance audits of the budget implementation of social ministries (e.g., Ministry of Education and Training, Ministry of Health). He conducted an environmental audit on environmental protection in industrial clusters and craft villages in Tu Son city, Bac Ninh province, for the period of 2019-2021.

My goals for the Fellowship

I am most hopeful that during my Fellowship I will be able to:

• Learn about performance audit theory and practice. I am particularly interested in learning more about how performance audits are used to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs and activities.
• Learn how governments work in Canada and in other Fellows’ countries. I am eager to learn about the different ways in which governments operate in different countries, and I believe that this experience will be invaluable in my future career as an auditor.
• Develop my teamwork, planning, and audit topic selection skills. I am confident that the Fellowship will provide me with the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with experienced auditors, and I am excited to develop these essential skills.

The impact I hope to make as a graduate Fellow

After I complete my Fellowship, I hope to make a significant difference in the State Audit Office of Vietnam and in my country as a whole by contributing to the development of the SAV’s performance audit practice and raising the profile of performance audit among SAV colleagues.