Audit institutions carry out performance auditing to strengthen accountability in public spending. This type of audit is much more flexible than audit of financial accounts, and represents opportunity to strengthen accountability mechanism in a country. It is because of its flexibility that requires innovative approaches that this type of auditing is in the same time considered as one of most demanding types of audits.

This is why the four-days course, delivered by Mr. Jussi Bright from the European Court of Auditors and CEF facilitators was created in a way that audit experts were working on specific cases that were mainly taken from the practice of the European Court of Auditors. They were also given hands-on examples that exemplified how the theoretical concepts can be translated into practice.

There was a lot of positive feedback from the participants – audit officials from the Armenian Chamber of Control, internal audit officials from the Ministry of Finance, other ministries, and officials from the National Assembly “More and more stakeholders in PFM are coming with request of materials and information about the performance auditing training you have conducted in Armenia,” reports Mr. Gor Khachatryan, the coordinator from the Deutsche Gesselschaft für International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

Given the complexity of the topic the auditor will need additional practice to start implementing performance audits. Knowledge of underlying concepts, e.g. the concept of 3 e’s is of main importance on this point. What audit representatives can also use in learning are materials and techniques, such as issue analysis technique which helps them to structure audit questions.

The in-country learning event was held on November 11–14, 2015, in Aghveran Armenia. Following the strategy of Armenian Chamber of Control to introduce performance auditing, and support of the Public financial management in the South Caucasus Program, implemented by the Deutsche Gesselschaft für International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and co-financed by the EU,  CEF was invited by the GIZ to deliver performance auditing workshop.

For key takeaways from this event, please visit our digital story.