Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation and National Audit Office of the United Kingdom held a bilateral online meeting on cooperation on May,18. Aleksei Kudrin and Gareth Davies made plans for further cooperation. Main issues of common interest: healthcare, technologies and openness.

At the meeting ACRF and INTOSAI Chair Aleksei Kudrin exchanged the latest news in auditing with his counterpart. They both agreed on the importance of SAIs effectiveness during emerging issues as COVID-2019, transparency end exchange of best practices.

“I would like to highlight the important role of the UK NAO chairing at the EUROSAI Project Group on the COVID-19 Pandemic Response. This group has proven its effectiveness and has also contributed to knowledge exchange and the improvement of the quality of audit reports”,

– noticed Aleksei Kudrin during the conversation.

Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General, supported his colleague:

“Our leading role in EUROSAI – future developments and emerging issues. We will be working with EUROSAI Governing Board helping to outline the agenda and we look very much forward to engaging with you and INTOSAI”.

Moreover, openness and digitalization of SAIs were among the questions of mutual interest. According to Gareth Davies, IT audit is a big issue nowadays:

“Yesterday we published the latest update to the tool which is tracking the government’s expenditure on the pandemic. We are providing regular updates on total cost of the programs that were launched to respond to the pandemic: health spending, economic spending and so on”.

In his opinion, such practices make a huge contribution in addressing transparency issues.

ACRF and NAO leaders also touched upon factors that make SAI be accountable, responsible and effective. Both parties underlined the importance of development strategy and following its main provisions. Relevant information, quality reports, monitoring results and open dialogue – these four factors help SAIs communicate properly with its stakeholders. To assess the progress in these spheres ACRF and NAO conduct special surveys that help them to be up-date and relevant.

At the end of the meeting Aleksei Kudrin and Gareth Davies made arrangements on better interaction especially in healthcare, technologies and openness. Seminars, INTOSAI University, auditing community initiatives and other resources will become platforms for their mutually beneficial cooperation.