OFFICE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL OF ZAMBIA Presentation made to the 9 th Meeting of INTOSAI Working Group on Key National Indicator

Outline of the Presentation  Introduction  KNIs in Zambia  The role of the SAI of Zambia in KNI  Challenges  The Way Forward  Conclusion

Introduction  The mandate, establishment and functions of the Office of the Auditor General are as contained in Article 256 of the amended Republican Constitution, the Public Audit Act and the Public Finance Act.  The Office is a Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) charged with the responsibility of providing external audit services to government ministries and any other institution that receives Government subventions in order to enhance transparency and accountability in the collection and utilisation of Public resources.  According, the Office currently conducts Financial and Regularity, Performance and Environmental, Information Technology and Forensic and Investigation audits.

Introduction cont.  Its mission is to provide quality audit services to government and other institutions in order to promote accountability and value for money in the management of public funds and other resources for the benefit of society  Therefore, the Office is not restricted from carrying out any other types of audits in order to achieve this mission.

KNIs in Zambia  The country has a national development planning framework referred to as Vision  The country develops five (5) year period National Development Plans (NDPs) which contain the intentions of Government per sector.  The KNIs are spelt out in this document. There is also a system of a rolling medium term Expenditure Framework which has other short term indicators.

KNIs in Zambia Cont. The main national development indicators used are:  Economic External and internal debt, GDP, Inflationary rate, Level of unemployment, Foreign Direct Investment rate  Social The Indicators around the MDGs including those on Maternal Health, Child Mortality, Education, Poverty Reduction, Human Rights and others, Social.  Governance Corruption Index, Human Rights Position and others

KNIs in Zambia Cont.  There are indicators at program, sectoral and national level which are KNI. In addition, Zambia being a member of the United nations (UN), it has the resolve of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which with the associated with various Sectoral Indicators.  Our financial, regularity, performance and other audits are based on these programs and activities. Therefore, currently the KNI is indirectly through these audits.

The role of SAI of Zambia in KNI The SAI carries out audits of public funds that are ordinarily employed in meeting KNI’s per sector, per institution, per programme and project. Recently, the SAI carried out Performance audits of various program such as:  Deployment of Teachers in Basic Schools  Provision of Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and new born care in Maternal Health  The Management and Control of Livestock Diseases  Water and Sanitation Programme Support The experiences in the Parliamentary discussions of these reports revealed that we ought to do more of such audits as they are directly related to KNIs.

Challenges  Audit of KNI not yet formally institutionalized with the structures of the SAI – this is so because we only do performance audits at project, program level.  Capacity is yet to be built in auditing of KNI.  Transition from financial and regularity audit to program audit that handle KNIs.  The concept is still new and the linkage between our audits and KNIs has historically been blurred.  Limited resources.

Way Forward  The current restructuring to take care of the KNI phenomen.  Training of staff.  Research around KNI`s and our continued involvement in the working group.  Create a specific framework and methodology on the audit of KNI.  Carry out pilot KNI audits in line with developed methodology All this should be achieved during our strategic period 2017 – 2021.

Conclusion  Apart from our audit of key sectors on Performance audits, our SAI has not commenced the audit of KNI’s in detail.  This is when we are thinking of the process of embracing this concept and our joining the Work Group is to assist us understand how other SAI’s have approached the issue so that we can learn from them.

THE END Thanks