NIK President Marian Banaś held a bilateral meeting with the President of the Federal Court of Accounts of Brazil Bruno Dantas. Some of the addressed topics were: independence of state auditing from the executive power as a guarantee of unbiased and objective audit results, the future of INTOSAI and its strategic development and bilateral relations between Poland and Brazil.
INTOSAI, or International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions, is a non-political organisation associating SAIs from all over the world. Its main tasks include working out and promoting standards and working methods of public sector auditors, developing institutional capacity as well as sharing knowledge and experience.
NIK actively participates in INTOSAI standardisation works. NIK President is the Chair of the INTOSAI Subcommittee on Internal Control Standards which promotes the idea of constant betterment of management control of public sector entities and active cooperation between SAIs and internal auditors of the audited entities. The Subcommittee is one of the bodies of the Professional Standards Committee (PSC) which aims at constant improvement of quality and recognisability of INTOSAI standards. A meeting of PSC was held in parallel with the INTOSAI Congress. During the meeting the results of the Committee works in the past years were endorsed and plans for the coming years were adopted.
NIK President is a Member of the INTOSAI Governing Board, a body in charge of INTOSAI works between Congresses. In the INTOSAI Governing Board NIK President is a representative of EUROSAI, which is a regional organisation of INTOSAI, associating the SAIs of Europe. Together with the President of the Court of Auditors NIK President represents the interests of EUROSAI on the world forum. NIK has been a Member of the Governing Board of INTOSAI since 2013 – currently the Polish SAI is in the middle of its 6-year term.
At this year’s meeting the Governing Board adopted the Strategic Plan of INTOSAI for 2023–2028. According to the plan, the main tasks of INTOSAI include: support of SAIs’ independence which is violated in many countries, also in Europe, and active participation of SAIs in pursuing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At the same time, INTOSAI will continue to perform its statutory tasks, that is: standardisation, institutional development of SAIs and exchange of information and knowledge. The task force which developed the new strategic plan was chaired by the SAI of the United States. NIK President had a bilateral meeting with the Comptroller General of the United States, among others concerning SAIs’ independence and tightening of cooperation with the Government Accountability Office.
On the occasion of the Congress NIK President also took part in several bilateral meetings, among others with the Presidents of the SAIs of Saudi Arabia, Argentina, China, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Peru, Slovakia, Great Britain, United Arab Emirates. Marian Banaś discussed with the President of the SAI of India the concept of restoring bilateral seminars which were held regularly before the pandemic. Since NIK was requested to conduct a peer review in the SAI of Indonesia, the Heads of both SAIs addressed this issue.
Marian Banaś also talked to the President of the SAI of Great Britain (National Audit Office) about the European project which is to standardise the English-language terminology related to auditing and improvement of European auditors’ qualifications in preparing audit reports in English.
This project - called the Audit English - has attracted a lot of attention – subsequent (3rd) edition on writing convincing recommendations will be held at the beginning of December. The project was initiated and arranged by NIK, whereas experts from NAO carry out training programmes and workshops, where they present model terminology used e.g. in financial auditing and practical guidelines on how to write audit reports in English.
The following INTOSAI Congress will be held in three years and its host will be the SAI of Egypt.
