Audit Scotland (Annual Report)
Agenda item 4 is the Audit Scotland annual report, on which I ask the Auditor General to brief the committee.
I will be very brief in view of the time.
Our “Audit Scotland Annual Report 2009/10” provides a summary of Audit Scotland’s performance over the year and gives information on what we have done and on our financial performance. The report is, of course, a public document. After the summer recess it will, likely, be considered in some detail by the Scottish Commission for Public Audit, which examines our use of resources.
In the annual report, we try to capture how we have responded to the new challenging environment for public finances. In particular, it covers how we have looked to maximise the impact of our performance reporting and our financial audits to help public bodies both to improve quality of services and to do more with their money by finding lower-cost ways of providing current standards of service.
Measuring the impact of our work is an issue that we take seriously. That impact can be measured in many ways, on which the report provides some detail both through the narrative and through the case studies. Again, I would be very happy to answer any questions on that subject. I should mention in passing that the Public Audit Committee fulfils an important role in enhancing the impact and reach of our work by holding accountable officers to account on the basis of the reports that we present to the committee.
Very briefly, some of the key messages in the report are as follows. First, we produced 215 final annual audit reports for the financial year 2008-09, with 100 per cent of those being completed on time. I should emphasise that not all of Audit Scotland’s work is reported directly to the Public Audit Committee, but we do very important work out there in the public sector in Scotland. Those 215 final audit reports, all of which are on our website, are supported by more than 880 separate reports on the 215 bodies that we audit. More than 97 per cent of local government bodies and more than 90 per cent of central Government bodies thought that our auditors provided a high-quality audit service. That is a reasonable standard, but we are always striving to improve as we go forward.
Secondly, we published 23 performance audit and best-value reports, many of which have been presented to the Public Audit Committee. Much of that work is about helping public bodies to identify areas of improvement to help them to get through the current and future financial challenges. As committee members might recall, we are revisiting our programme of performance audits to ensure that it is relevant to the economic climate. We look forward to further contributions to that from the committee.
Thirdly, I want to mention the streamlining of scrutiny of public bodies, in particular of local government bodies. That streamlining is beginning to deliver results. In 2009-10, Audit Scotland carried out the first joint reviews with other scrutiny bodies and we piloted our plans for more streamlined and targeted best-value audits of local authorities. That work is currently being rolled out.
Fourthly, I am pleased to say that Audit Scotland was named the 52nd best place to work in the public sector in the whole of the United Kingdom by The Sunday Times. Its review, which is quite a robust exercise, said that we provide staff with
“interesting work in a friendly, supportive environment”
and that our colleagues are proud to be doing a job that aims to improve public services. We take some satisfaction from that.
Finally, we presented to 39 seminars, conferences and training events and we received nine groups of overseas visitors. In addition, we served on more than 50 external bodies and working groups. Much of that work might not be immediately evident or transparent to the committee, but we make a significant contribution and impact in those areas.
I am very happy to answer any questions and to provide any further information.
12:45
I thank the Auditor General for that report. I think that I speak on behalf of the whole committee when I commend the Auditor General and the staff of Audit Scotland for the quality of the work that they have done over the past year. The reports that we have received have been of exceptional quality. Your work has aided the committee’s work and benefited the Parliament. However, what is more to the point is that your work has been of enormous value to taxpayers in ensuring that their money is used effectively and properly. I would find it hard to overstate the value of the work that Audit Scotland does, for which I thank you.
You touched on a couple of issues in your report that have been frustrating to members of all parties—for example, you spoke about the significant amount of work that you do on local government issues, which does not come to this committee. However, committee members wanted to look at some of the issues that were reported in relation to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, but we were unable to do that. Maybe Parliament needs to debate in the future whether, when there are significant issues of public concern, the remit and scope of the committee should be re-examined so that we can give proper recognition to Audit Scotland’s work. I am not convinced that the work that you do for some other parts of the public sector receives sufficient scrutiny, which is a pity.
We thank you for everything that you have done. Are there any comments from committee members?
I would like very much to thank the Auditor General and his whole team for all the work that we have been presented with and the very comprehensive outline in the report of what has been carried through.
I have just a wee question. I know that you are not an educational body, but in order that other public bodies that spend public money get it right and do not have to be reported to the committee, is there a function whereby they can approach Audit Scotland for help in developing their expertise?
Barbara, would you like to say something about how we follow up on our reports and interact with the audited bodies?
Yes, I would be happy to do so. I am thinking more of the work that we do around technical advice to our auditors, which is also available in bulletin form to all audited bodies. That is definitely one area of interaction.
We are very keen to share our experiences. We have a very active programme of bringing in people to train them on the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy qualification. Our hope is that some of those people will go out into our audited bodies and take an active part in managing public services, as well. We are very proud that a couple of our trainees recently got awards in their CIPFA exams.
On follow-up and trying to promote good practice—it was interesting that the committee asked Dr Woods about that earlier—we have just started trying to promote good practice through our own website. We are actively trying to follow up all our performance audit work to ensure that, if we find good practice, we try to promote it elsewhere. As Bill Kidd said, we are not an educational body, but we recognise that we have a role in promoting good practice.
Perhaps one other fact that the committee might be interested in is that we have recorded not far short of 300,000 inquiries to our website, which is really very substantial. It is also noticeable when we do our impact reports that some of them are downloaded a great deal once they have been presented to Parliament. They are clearly being used out there in the public sector, which is encouraging.
I just want to reinforce what the convener said about the competence of Audit Scotland’s staff and the quality of the reports. There is also the fact that the Auditor General and his staff always maintain their integrity and independence, even when the Auditor General sometimes does not give me the answers that I would like.
I echo what everyone else has said; I have said it before, too. I am not surprised that you were named the 52nd best place to work in the public sector in the United Kingdom. Remember, if ever I need a job, I would like to work for the national fraud initiative.
You mentioned a figure of 300,000. Was that the figure for inquiries or visits to the website?
There were 300,000 hits on the website.
I thought that you might have meant that there had been 300,000 downloads of the report.
Over the years, many bodies have sat across the table from us. A common question that we have asked them, with regard to the Auditor General’s work, is how they evaluate the benefits of their services to the public. How do you apply that process to yourselves?
We have devoted a lot of time and thought to that and have had a number of conversations with the Scottish Commission for Public Audit around that matter. Essentially, we have tried to use the model of public value to identify where we add value in the Scottish public sector and we have tried to try to develop an impact and reporting framework that reflects that. For example, in the report that is before the committee, you will see the result of quality surveys in local government and central Government that show how they value the work that we do.
In relation to the performance audits that we undertake, we consider an impact study. We review all the impact reports that we receive and try to learn lessons from them. We conducted an independent survey of how the best-value activity that was undertaken by Audit Scotland in the first round of best value was received by local government, and the results were pretty positive. We assess the impact and the quality of what we are doing in a number of ways.
I will address the issue of efficiency savings head on. To be absolutely frank, I would like to be able to give a more positive account of the extent to which we can audit efficiency savings. However, that brings us up against the role that audit can play and the role that management plays. It is for managers of major public services to provide the right sort of information that we can use and evaluate. It is quite noticeable that, with regard to reports such as the efficient government study, or even a piece of work such as our orthopaedic services report that the committee considered recently, in relation to which we thought we were going into a data-rich environment, a large amount of the time and effort is taken up by attempts to get decent data. That is recognised by Government, so we are all on a journey together in that regard. However, it means that, often, the answers that I bring to the committee regarding the validity of efficiency savings, for example, are less complete than I would wish.
As there are no other questions, we will move on to the next item on the agenda.