The development of “Blue Economy” and the issues of Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence were the key topics of the Second Summit of the Supreme Audit Institutions of the G20 countries (SAI20) opened on June 12 in Goa, India.

During the first day of the Summit, Ms. Galina Izotova, Acting Chair of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, spoke about the experience of SAI Russia as well as the prospects of the SAI20 format as a platform for multilateral dialog.

The consolidation of SAI20 as an official Engagement group within the framework of the G20 demonstrates the importance of cooperation between SAIs on a wide range of issues,

Galina Izotova said.

The main topics during the Indian chairmanship in the group – “Blue Economy” and Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) – reflect the correlation between environmental, social, economic, and technological challenges. For the Supreme Audit Institutions, this means the need for further monitoring and consideration of new public policy issues.

According to Ms. Izotova, this will practically require significant efforts to develop competencies and increase capacity as well as use new tools and approaches to external public audit. A good example here is one of the priority projects implemented during the Accounts Chamber's chairmanship in INTOSAI – Digital University for the INTOSAI Community (U-INTOSAI). The experience of working on this project involving 56 partners of the Accounts Chamber both within INTOSAI and beyond demonstrates that the cooperation between SAIs and sharing best practices ensures the promotion of public administration accountability.

Galina Izotova highlighted the relevance of the priority issues of Indian Chairmanship in SAI20.

“Despite the fact that the “Blue Economy” has not yet been identified as a separate activity of the Accounts Chamber, the audit of certain aspects of this topic will be continued,

she stressed

considering that the length of the Russian coastline in the Arctic is 22 thousand kilometers, the use of new audit tools, especially geospatial planning, is a promising direction. The priority areas will also be the audit of biodiversity and local communities’ conservation as well as the audit of the use of energy resources in the region.

As for the prospects for the development of a responsible approach to the use of artificial intelligence, Ms. Izotova once again drew the attention of the Summit participants to the fact that AI is not only an object but also a tool of the public audit:

The use of artificial intelligence as an audit tool improves the quality of state programs and projects analysis and accelerates the conduct of audits, especially the real-time auditing.

In addition, Galina Izotova highlighted that the Accounts Chamber plans to hold special focus on the audit of the quality of data used by state information systems, including those involving AI technologies.

Summing up, Galina Izotova stressed that the SAI20 format is an important platform for the Accounts Chamber for multilateral dialog and experience exchange on a wide range of topical issues of the audit community.

During the Summit, Ms. Izotova also held working meetings with the heads of SAIs of Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, and the UAE, where the parties discussed the issues of bilateral and multilateral cooperation.