SAI Russia is pleased to remind you about the bright days of proactive work at the First Online INTOSAI International Scientific and Practical Conference under the auspices of the INTOSAI Chair, which was held in April 21-22, 2021.

The event was held in a new format for the community - in addition to the classic plenary sessions, topical issues were discussed in small groups in the online brainstorming form. More than 700 representatives from 102 countries not only joined the event, but also shared their expert viewpoints during the open discussions.

During the plenary session on April 21, representatives of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the International Budget Partnership, moderated by Anatoly Chubais, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Relations with International Organizations, shared their experience on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, ideas about the further transformation of international organizations, government agencies and SAIs in the world after the pandemic.

During the first plenary session, the key issues were identified as:

• Deepening digital inequality
• Focus on strategic planning, risk prevention and business process continuity
• Effectiveness of horizontal links at the global level
• The need for a mobile and scalable IT infrastructure that allows to work remotely in any conditions
• Continuous staff training = investment in the future

On April 22, Julia Solovieva, Managing Director of Google Russia; Sobhi Tawil, Director of the Future of Learning and Innovation Team at UNESCO; Andrey Kurpatov, Scientific Director of the Sberbank Neuroscience and Human Behaviour Laboratory, President of the Higher School of Methodology; Maxim Nazarov, Vice-Rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), as well as Hans Wissema, Professor Emeritus at Delft University of Technology, author of the book "University of the Third Generation" discussed the challenges and opportunities associated with the development of online education. The moderator of the session was Svetlana Infimovskaya, Director of School 21, Sberbank educational initiative.

The expert discussion revealed the key trends and problems in education facing not only by the SAIs, but also the world community as a whole.

Some of them:

• Users' readiness for online education (psychological changes, the ability to retain attention, difficulties of socialization)
• Maintaining the quality of content with a wide audience coverage
• Providing access to digital tools and digital literacy
• Dependence on the decisions of private companies and their infrastructure (cybersecurity, personal data retention)

A distinctive feature of the Conference was a series of open discussions of the INTOSAI expert community, during which more than 300 people, without restrictions on the level of position, in 31 small groups discussed the issues of health care audit, social support, public procurement, the problems of data analysis, inclusiveness, openness, strategic approach to public audit and audit of achieving sustainable development goals.

The final document summarized this invaluable experience. It is available for download on the official website.

We wish you a pleasant reading!