We live in a constantly changing world and Supreme Audit Institutions need to adapt to changes if they want to stay relevant. Exponential technological advancement has been changing the way we live and with the Covid-19 crisis, this process has only been accelerated. With technological advancements, organizations and people must store, organize, and use enormous volumes of data, process this data faster and safer than ever before, use a variety of tools and technologies, and cope with greater speed of change.

Governments around the globe are also investing in technology and introducing new systems. On the one side, investments in technology can help governments to optimize their functions, automate processes, and provide better services for their citizens. On the other side, digital solutions may be vulnerable to external attacks, corruption and create new levels of complexity and exclusion.

This demands that SAI’s obtain new skills and knowledge to cope with these new audit subjects. Therefore, it is important for SAIs to understand the technological change around them, to assess the implications of this change for their audit working, to leverage on technological advancement in SAI audits, and to be able to audit technologies employed by governments.