Last week, leaders from six SAIs participating in the IDI–ADB Initiative Sustainable Performance Audit Practices in Asia and the Pacific gathered in Bangkok for the third-and-final Leadership Forum under the Initiative. The forum provided a timely opportunity to take stock of progress, explore how to align with the revised ISSAI 140 Quality Management for SAIs, and reflect on how audit work is delivering impact for people.

SAI leaders unanimously recognised the urgency of adapting to the new approach of audit quality management system consistent with the revised ISSAI 140, which came into effect on 1 January 2025. Timely adaptation is essential to ensure that SAIs can continue to confidently assert in their audit reports that their audits were conducted in accordance with International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAIs).

The revised standard puts quality objectives at the center of audit quality management system, allowing SAIs to focus their resources where quality is most at risk. As such, this raises not just audit quality, but also SAI efficiency. Or as one SAI leaders joked, “finally, a standard that tells us where to look before we leap!”

Leaders also turned their attention to audit follow-up systems. They examined how these systems help demonstrate that audit work leads to tangible change. There was broad agreement that an audit is not truly complete when the report is published – but rather when audit recommendations are fully implemented. As one Auditor General aptly put it, “There is little point in planning new audits if recommendations from past ones remain unimplemented” – a remark that drew nods around the room.