Inter-American Development Bank
facebook
twitter
youtube
linkedin
instagram
Abierto al públicoBeyond BordersCaribbean Development TrendsCiudades SosteniblesEnergía para el FuturoEnfoque EducaciónFactor TrabajoGente SaludableGestión fiscalGobernarteIdeas MatterIdeas que CuentanIdeaçãoImpactoIndustrias CreativasLa Maleta AbiertaMoviliblogMás Allá de las FronterasNegocios SosteniblesPrimeros PasosPuntos sobre la iSeguridad CiudadanaSostenibilidadVolvamos a la fuente¿Y si hablamos de igualdad?Home
Citizen Security and Justice Creative Industries Development Effectiveness Early Childhood Development Education Energy Envirnment. Climate Change and Safeguards Fiscal policy and management Gender and Diversity Health Labor and pensions Open Knowledge Public management Science, Technology and Innovation  Trade and Regional Integration Urban Development and Housing Water and Sanitation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Caribbean Development Trends

  • HOME
  • CATEGORIES
    • Agribusiness
    • Antigua and Barbuda
    • Barbados
    • BehaviorChange
    • Belize
    • Bermuda
    • biodiversity
    • Blockchain
    • Caribbean
    • Caribbean Culture and Media
    • Climate Change
    • Creative Economy
    • Crime Prevention and Citizen Security
    • Data and Knowledge
    • De-risking
    • Dominica
    • Dutch
    • Early Childhood Development
    • Economic Growth
    • Education Policy
    • energy
    • entrepreneurship
    • Environmental and Climate Change
    • Events
    • Extractives
    • Finance
    • Fiscal Rules
    • gender
    • Governance and Regulatory Policy Reforms
    • Grenada
    • Guyana
    • Haiti
    • Health
    • Health Policy
    • Hurricane
    • Hurricane Irma
    • infrastructure
    • Innovation and change
    • Intellectual Property
    • IWD
    • Jamaica
    • JumpCaribbean
    • Labor
    • Labour Markets
    • MOOC
    • Music
    • Natural Disasters
    • Nurturing Institutions
    • OECS
    • Podcast
    • Poverty
    • Private Sector and Entrepreneurship
    • Saint Kitts and Nevis
    • Saint Lucia
    • Saint Vincent and Grenadines
    • skills
    • Sports for Development
    • Suriname
    • Technology
    • The Bahamas
    • The Blue Economy
    • Transportation
    • Tourism
    • Trinidad and Tobago
    • Uncategorized
    • VAWG
    • Webinar
    • women
    • Women for Change
    • youth
  • Country Offices
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Suriname
    • Trinidad and Tobago
  • Press Releases
    • Bahamas
    • Barbados
    • Guyana
    • Jamaica
    • Suriname
    • Trinidad and Tobago
  • Authors

How Modernizing Has Improved Efficiency, Transparency and Audit Security

July 26, 2017 by Francesco De Simone - Camila Mejia Giraldo Leave a Comment


By Franceso De Simone and Camila Mejia

“Transparent practices form the basis for enhanced accountability”. Both “transparency” and “accountability”, as described in an OECD publication, are key pillars for development and essential elements for democratic governance in modern societies.

The work done by a country’s primary auditing institution, usually the Office of the Comptroller General can sometimes seem arcane and bureaucratic to the public yet the role that these institutions play is far reaching in enhancing transparency and guiding the efficient functioning of our democracies, through the monitoring the use of public resources.

Consequent upon this reasoning, the modernization of Audit Institutions is an important priority for many countries. This means making them more efficient by ultimately increasing their effectiveness in detecting irregularities in public spending.

In Jamaica, this important control and oversight function is the purview of the Auditor General’s Department (AGD), first created in 1829 and later established firmly into law in 1851. The AGD’s duties and responsibilities as stated in the Jamaican Constitution and in the 2011 Financial Administration and Audit Act, identify the AGD as the institution responsible for assessing the “effectiveness of the Government of Jamaica’s financial management systems and the level of compliance with financial management policies and guidelines.” Over the years, the volume and complexity of the oversight function of the AGD has grown constantly. In 2012, this led the AGD to approach us here at the IDB in search for technical assistance to improve its effectiveness.  The specific request revolved around the automation of several processes to enhance efficiency, essentially optimizing information management and storage systems and transitioning to a paperless system reliant on new ICT tools.

The main concern was the duration of processing times for some key types of audits conducted by the AGD, which, it was considered, had margins for improvements. Needless to say, this is a critical aspect: reducing processing times for audits means that the same number of auditors can perform more audits during the fiscal year, and thus oversee a larger percentage of public sector spending.

The IDB responded to the request from the AGD with funding from the Transparency Fund, a facility that provides grants for transparency and anti-corruption projects. The project was financed with donations from the Government of Canada, the Government of Norway and the MasterCard Corporation. The total cost of the project was US$640,000. The fund supplied US$500,000 and the remainder by the Government of Jamaica. The project started in 2012 and was formally closed in 2016, although the bulk of activities were completed by the end of 2015. It was structured in three components: the design of the new information management strategy, the implementation of the strategy, and a capacity building to train ADG staff to use the new system.

With funding from the project, the AGD first conducted a full assessment of the existing information management system, and acquired, installed, and operationalized a commercial off-the-shelf system to implement the automation of the audit process. New servers and scanners were purchased and installed, paving the way for a paperless audit system. Once the system was in place, 100% of the Auditors and other AGD staff received training.

The new ICT systems helped the AGD meet its main goal of making audits more efficient. As shown in the table below processing times for key audits were reduced by one week, on average. Timeframes for Compliance audits, which used to take an average of five weeks, were reduced to three; auditing of financial statements went from four to three, information system audit went from twelve to ten. These results often exceeded expectations.

In addition to improving efficiency, the new ICT systems also strengthened the security of the audit process, particularly the management of audit documents. Before the project the AGD had no means of systematically tracking edits and changes made to audit documents, but by 2016, 100% of changes in documents were fully traceable, adding greatly to the transparency and security of the entire audit process.

Notwithstanding these results, the full benefits of the project are yet to be seen. It is expected that the reduction in processing times should lead to a larger number of audit reports produced and more government agencies covered. This is yet to materialize since the project was completed a year ago.

 


Filed Under: Innovation & Change, Jamaica, Labour & Learning

Francesco De Simone

Francesco De Simone is the IDB Modernization of the State Specialist based in Kingston, Jamaica. Before joining the IDB Jamaica country office he was Technical Advisor of the Transparency Fund, managed by the State Institutional Capacity Division (ICS). Prior to joining the Transparency Fund, Francesco worked on transparency and anti-corruption issues at the IDB Office of Institutional Integrity, at the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Center, based in Norway, at Transparency International, and in the private sector. Francesco got masters at the University ’Orientale in Napoli, Italy, and at George Washington University.

Camila Mejia Giraldo

Camila Mejia Giraldo is a Modernization of the State Specialist at the Innovation for Citizen Services Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). She has focused on the design and implementation of public sector reform, civil registry, identification, citizen security and justice programs. Before this position, she worked in the Labor Markets and Social Security Division of the IDB, where she focused on the fiscal sustainability of the pension system in Jamaica and in labor market insertion programs for vulnerable populations in the North East of Brazil. Camila also worked in the OECD Development center where she did research on informality and gender, pension systems and non-contributory pension schemes in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us

Subscribe

Search

Caribbean Dev Trends

We provide unique and timely insights on the Caribbean and its political, social, and economic development. At the IDB, we strive to improve lives in the Caribbean by creating vibrant and resilient economies where people are safe, productive and happy.

Similar posts

  • Jamaica launches new electronic procurement system
  • Belize is Raising the Bar
  • Solid Foundation
  • Rural energy supply to increase economic opportunities for all
  • Things that the Nation Needs: Effective Public Financial Management

Footer

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo
facebook
twitter
youtube
youtube
youtube

    Blog posts written by Bank employees:

    Copyright © Inter-American Development Bank ("IDB"). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives. (CC-IGO 3.0 BY-NC-ND) license and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC- IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.


    For blogs written by external parties:

    For questions concerning copyright for authors that are not IADB employees please complete the contact form for this blog.

    The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDB, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.

    Attribution: in addition to giving attribution to the respective author and copyright owner, as appropriate, we would appreciate if you could include a link that remits back the IDB Blogs website.



    Privacy Policy

    Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

    Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

    Aviso Legal

    Las opiniones expresadas en estos blogs son las de los autores y no necesariamente reflejan las opiniones del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, sus directivas, la Asamblea de Gobernadores o sus países miembros.

    facebook
    twitter
    youtube