Practice Guides

Strong oversight is important to the success of every public sector organization in delivering services effectively and in promoting greater accountability. Auditors can play an important role in helping public sector organizations achieve a balance between risk and control, and efficiency and cost.

The Foundation is pleased to announce the release of our newest publication: Practice Guide to Auditing Oversight – A guide that will help public sector legislative and internal auditors to plan, carry out and report on audits that address oversight.

Click here to access the Practice Guide to Auditing Oversight.

What is oversight?

Oversight refers to the actions taken to review and monitor public sector organizations and their policies, plans, programs, and projects, to ensure that they:

• are achieving expected results;
• represent good value for money; and
• comply with applicable policies, laws, regulations, and ethical standards.

How will this guide help?

The Practice Guide to Auditing Oversight will help auditors identify the causes of breakdowns in oversight, highlight weaknesses and inefficiencies in oversight regimes, point to best practices, make recommendations for improvements; and help departments, agencies, boards and authorities to improve their oversight performance.

The Practice Guide provides information and guidance that will help auditors to complete the successive steps involved in planning, conducting, and reporting the results of an audit of oversight. The guidelines will be especially useful to auditors who wish to audit:

• oversight of agencies, boards and authorities; and
• oversight of major initiatives in departments and ministries.

The Practice Guide also includes a glossary and a list of references (with hyperlinks to quickly access audit reports and other relevant documents on oversight).