Audit Scotland (Corporate Priorities 2009 to 2012)
We move on to item 4, which is consideration of Audit Scotland's corporate priorities. I invite the Auditor General to make some introductory remarks.
Today we publish Audit Scotland's corporate plan for the next three years—from 2009 to 2012. I bring it to the committee for your interest, and it will also be presented to the Scottish Commission for Public Audit, given its role in examining Audit Scotland's proposals for the use of resources and expenditure.
The plan has been prepared with the involvement of the Accounts Commission and after extensive consultation with public bodies, stakeholders and our own staff. We put a great emphasis on the consultation because we recognised that there had been many changes in the public sector landscape in the years since Audit Scotland was created. Over that time, our work has grown significantly in its complexity and range, and we need to ensure that we can evolve and adapt to those changes.
The plan is informed by the many responses that we received to our consultation. I am pleased to say that more than 140 of our stakeholders responded. We found it particularly useful to have the support of Capability Scotland in organising an event to ensure that our work takes account, as far as it can, of the needs and requirements of diverse groups, including people with disabilities. There was a good response from our colleagues in Audit Scotland, and we are extremely grateful to everyone who contributed their ideas to the development of the plan.
The consultation was interesting because there was a remarkable degree of consensus on the most important issues that the public sector and we the auditors face over the next five years. Those issues are the increasing pressure on public spending—that will come as no surprise to any of us; the increasing emphasis on more efficient working; the continuing need for high standards of corporate governance, financial management and control; and the need to deliver more efficient and effective scrutiny and accountability.
The plan confirms that the work that Audit Scotland does for me and for the Accounts Commission must continue to support both accountability and improvement. It also commits Audit Scotland to five priorities over the next three years. The first priority is to deliver more streamlined audit. In particular, we will work in partnership with other scrutiny bodies and improvement agencies to avoid duplication of effort and make our work as effective as possible. The second priority recognises that Audit Scotland needs to strike the right balance between holding public bodies to account on behalf of the Public Audit Committee and the Parliament, and helping them to improve using our resources and skills and the evidence that we gather. The clear message from our stakeholders is that they would like Audit Scotland to do more to support the improvement of public services.
Thirdly, Audit Scotland aims to increase the impact of its work. We have developed an impact framework, which is outlined in the corporate plan, to collect evidence on impact. Fourthly, Audit Scotland aspires to be recognised by stakeholders, partners and public bodies as a centre of excellence for public audit—the plan sets out in some detail nine supporting activities that will help us to achieve that. Finally, we are committed to keeping the cost of our work to a minimum. We will aim to deliver year-on-year efficiency savings, and we will continue to improve the transparency of our costs and governance arrangements. Those are the five priorities that came out of the consultation that we undertook.
We have also set out in the plan the evidence that we intend to use to measure and report on Audit Scotland's own performance, which will be reported in our annual reports from 2010 onwards. The plan also provides a context for the programme of performance audits that Audit Scotland will carry out from 2009 to 2012.
In parallel with the plan, I have prepared, with the Accounts Commission, a joint statement of principles of public audit in Scotland, which is a high-level framework within which all public audit will take place. It is intended to guide Audit Scotland and all the auditors in their work. I would like to introduce that statement briefly at a future meeting of the Public Audit Committee because it is a high-level policy issue that the committee might want to be aware of and comment on.
I just want to emphasise the point that I made previously about post-project evaluation and quality standards in the public sector in Scotland. Will you include work on that in your investigations so that at some point we will be able to see the pattern of public bodies adopting the standards?
Absolutely. The impact framework that Audit Scotland is developing will give a lot of attention to the effect that our studies have and to whether people take on board the recommendations in our work.
Good.
I had a glance through the report to see whether I could find the word "consultant" anywhere, but I could not. Do you use consultants?
Yes.
Do you adhere to all the principles in the report on the use of consultants in the public sector?
When we do a piece of work about management and governance elsewhere in the public sector, we now do our own internal piece of work in parallel with that. It is rather like an internal best-value review to assess whether we measure up. The internal review that we undertook found that we measure up in most respects but that there is scope for improvement—as there always is.
As I am sure the committee will understand, our work ranges widely across the public sector—members have seen the diversity and complexity of some of the work that we do. We cannot be expected to have in-house expertise on all those areas, so we use consultants. However, it is important that Audit Scotland can provide me with the assurance that we manage contracts with consultants well and provide an assurance to the Parliament, through our annual reporting and so on, that we work appropriately. Would Caroline Gardner like to add anything?
As the Auditor General said, as is our usual practice, we asked the study team that carried out the consultants report to review our internal practice. The report to the management team found that we comply with most good practice, but there were two areas in which it was considered that we could do better. The first was in consistently recording the reasons for using consultants. We always review it, but it is not always possible for an independent observer to be absolutely clear whether specialist expertise was brought in because a new piece of work was introduced at the request of the committee or someone else.
The second area in which we can do better is in recording the reasons for the procurement method that we use. Some of our consultancy contracts are small—when there are good reasons for not going to full and open competition—but, again, we do not record those reasons in every case. We have now agreed an action plan that will ensure that our recording is consistent. Barbara Hurst and David Pia, her colleague who deals with local government, are responsible for ensuring that that happens in future.
That is helpful. I can see that you recognise that, if you are making recommendations to other organisations, it is important that you, too, should adhere to the principles.
Audit Scotland has come a long way since 1999. You have been a positive influence on public bodies and all the partners that you have worked with in seeking improvement, as in local government through the Accounts Commission. As you should, you have set the highest standards for your own organisation. The problem is that no one notices that you are doing your work because things are done when they should be done, how they should be done and to maximum efficiency. It is a long way since 1999, but Audit Scotland is one organisation of which we can all be proud.
Almost 10 years.
Yes.
If there are no other comments, I thank the Auditor General for his contribution.