Recently, the IDI provided insights into the outcomes of the first week of the Design & Development workshop held within the framework of the IDI-ADB joint initiative ‘Sustainable performance audit practices in Asia and the Pacific’. Here, a global team including representatives from the six participating SAIs (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Mongolia, Philippines, and Papua New Guinea), the INTOSAI Performance Audit Subcommittee, and the INTOSAI Capacity Building Committee’s Task Force on Auditor Professionalisation convened in Thimphu, Bhutan.

Tasks encompassed drafting a roadmap to raise the profile of performance audits, laddering the INTOSAI’s competency framework for performance audit professionals, brainstorming on enabling organisational structures for performance auditing, and enhancing the user-friendliness of performance audit methodologies. Additionally, a focus group comprising key stakeholders—from Bhutanese parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to public sector representatives and civil society organisations—contributed valuable insights.

During the second week, the focus shifted to developing educational content for impactful strategic and annual audit planning. Leveraging the IDI’s pilot playbook on ‘Planning for Impact’, the global team developed learning materials for interactive 5-day learning. These cover a range of topics, including the understanding of the ‘planning for impact’ concept, designing the audit impact value chain and strategic audit plans tailored to national contexts, subsequent design of capacity development plans to achieve the set goals, annual audit plans and monitoring, evaluation and learning framework.

Individual global team members from the participating SAIs led the design and development of individual learning sessions. With IDI’s support, they are now tasked with disseminating this learning to pertinent teams within their respective SAIs, encompassing not only performance auditors but also policy planners, human resource managers, and monitoring, evaluation, and quality management staff. Specifically, to promote the ‘planning for impact’ approach across all SAI functions, enhancing their ability to contribute to the SAI’s added value.

The roll-out of learning modules is scheduled to commence in early June, ensuring continuous availability thereafter.