COA shifts gears towards paperless audit

Every month government agencies submit to the Commission on Audit (COA) hundreds, if not thousands of disbursement vouchers and other financial documents for post audit.

Imagine piles upon piles of incredibly thick folders full of vouchers being submitted to by government accountants and received by COA auditors every month! Not to mention the voluminous reports also being required to be submitted.

These stressful situation may soon be just a thing of the past.

Soon, government agencies may no longer need to submit actual physical financial documents to the Commission on Audit (COA) for post-audit as the Commission is gearing towards paperless audit.

What is a Paperless Audit?

A paperless audit is when an auditor accesses the electronic records of a client in order to conduct an audit. Ideally, it also means that the auditor issues a final report in an electronic format, such as by e-mail or by posting the information on a secure site for downloading by a client.

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In a statement, COA said the Commission moves to modernize public auditing practice through shift from paper-based to digital-driven audits.

The said initiative is part of COA’s Audit Modernization Program (AMP) which aims to achieve these five (5) major goals:

1. Develop an Audit Service Continuity Plan which contains continuity strategies that will effectively deal with disruptive events (such as the COVID-19 pandemic where the government shifted to online work or work from home arrangements) and to safeguard state auditors on the adverse effects of these disruptive events and to capacitate them on how to deal with these situations;

2. Capacite COA auditors on how to conduct remote audit through the use of Electronic Document Portal (EDP);

The EDP enables COA auditors to remotely request audit documents from government agencies (auditees) in electronic form.

What is remote audit?

During a remote audit or e-audit, an auditor performs an audit without being physically present at the site of the audited party (the auditee). Online tools are used to share and obtain evidence, taking into account the requirements and regulations applicable to the audit.

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3. Use of Business Intelligence, Advanced Data Analysis and Machine Learning Capabilities to perform heavy analysis on the entire population of data;

In 2020, COA started exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conduct its audit through the Project MIKA-EL or Machine Intelligence, Knowledge-based Audit, and Experience Learning.

Project MIKA-EL is an envisioned artificial intelligence (AI) that will work as an audit assistant, going through volumes of government records and helping auditors sort and process available digital data for faster and more efficient examination and audit. [COA]

Learn more about Project MIKA-EL here.

4. Build COA’s capability to accept electronic copy of records and effectively store them; and

5. Develop and use an information system that allows the online filing of pleading and likewise accept electronic/online payment for the same.

The Commission says these initiatives aims to make the work of state auditors easier and more efficiently.

According to COA Commissioner Roland C. Pondoc:

These initiatives are “imprints of how COA tries its best to bring forth excellence despite the challenges to provide every Filipino the kind of government that we can all be proud of.”

Commission on Audit

Source: COA moves to modernize audit

What do you think?

We all dream of a workplace where everything becomes efficient and easy to do, right? So what do you think about this plans and project of the Commission on Audit? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.