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Activities of the Task Force on Municipality Audit (TFMA) were presented yesterday, 24 May, 2017, by the chair of the task force Auditor General of the National Audit Office of Lithuania Dr Arūnas Dulkys during the Xth EUROSAI Congress in Istanbul, Turkey. The Congress has approved the Activity Report of TFMA as well as the Working Programme for period 2017-2020.
TFMA began its activities last year in June when the task force was established in the 44th EUROSAI Governing Board meeting. All EUROSAI members were invited to join the TFMA and the number of those who expressed their willingness to participate in international cooperation and exchange information in the field of municipality auditing amounts to 26. Since the task force has been operating for less than a year, its main focus was on setting the background for successful international cooperation and achievement of fruitful results in the future: members of TFMA distinguished the main features of municipality audits as well as added value of TFMA, determined working principles in the group, also the logo and the webpage of the TFMA were created. Furthermore, members shared the responsibilities for future activities, which were based on three strategic goals of TFMA:
- Exchanging the best practice and experience to reach audit results that have a substantial impact on improving public financial management;
- Making the external municipal auditing system more efficient;
- Encouraging cooperative audits.
Distinguishing features of municipality audit, defined by TFMA members, and expected added value from the task force was also presented during the 47th EUROSAI Governing Board meeting. TFMA sees the uniqueness of municipality audit through four main aspects: complexity, specificity, openness as well as accountability and use of data. These features allow to look for the added value municipality audit may bring for every participating country and the entire community of auditors. It is expected that seeking strategic goals and implementing its activities TFMA will bring benefit for SAIs and system as a whole. Consequently, it will precondition improvements to life quality and bring direct benefit to citizens of municipalities, and progress at local level will lead to the global respectively.
