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Appendix: Progress on our 2004-09 Strategic Plan
The Controller and Auditor-General's Strategy 2009-12.
In 2004, the Office decided to adopt an overall strategy of product leadership. By 2009, we wanted to reach a position where we set the benchmark for designing and delivering independent assurance services by:
- shaping our services to anticipate and respond to Parliament and other stakeholders’ needs and our changing environment;
- building our capability to create and deliver our services;
- fostering relationships and ways of working to support our strategy of product leadership; and
- acting independently in everything we do.
The Office identified as objectives:
| Products | People |
|---|---|
| Doubling the number of performance audits | Professional leadership – turning technically competent staff into professional leaders |
| Acknowledging inquiries as a core part of our business, and funding and resourcing inquiries appropriately | Flexible access to the best people – having a range of staff competent and available to carry out inquiries and other urgent work, or to backfill for others so engaged |
| Annual audits with stronger non-financial, waste, probity, and accountability flavours | Headspace to think – people and resource dedicated to research and development |
| Short lag time between legislative/other changes and product development | Processes |
| Established research capability | "Whole-of-Office" thinking and joint working, both internally and externally |
| Strategic deployment of our full range of assurance services around issues and risks | Innovation encouraged and rewarded |
Our progress
We have made good progress against our objectives, particularly with:
- increasing the numbers of performance audits and other studies, improving and formalising inquiry processes, and managing the associated resource management implications;
- managing the implementation of significant accounting and auditing standards changes (NZ IFRS and International Standards on Auditing) and public sector legislative changes regarding the accountability arrangements for government departments, Crown entities, and local authorities (the 2004 amendments to the Public Finance Act 1989, the Crown Entities Act 2004, and the Local Government Act 2002);
- successfully establishing a research and development function, which has co-ordinated and developed our work on our areas of strategic focus that cut across central and local government and the outputs of the Office, and include areas where the Auditor-General considers that public sector performance must be improved; and
- in training and developing our people. For example, we have developed high-potential and talent management programmes as ways of improving staff retention and broadening the skills of our current and future leaders, and have introduced leadership competency frameworks. Audit New Zealand has also refreshed its national professional development programme for all audit staff and provided for ongoing maintenance of its professional practices by establishing a Professional Practices Group.
However, there are important areas where we still have some distance to go before we will have achieved our objectives:
- the development of annual audits (in conjunction with our other work) with stronger non-financial, waste, probity, and accountability flavours;
- strategic deployment of our full range of assurance services around issues and risks; and
- “whole-of-Office” thinking and joint working, both internally and externally.
These objectives are still important, indeed essential, and they are central to our Strategy 2009-12. A review of the changing environment in which we operate supports our view that we should continue to pursue those objectives.
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