Late Auditor General          Floyd Augustine Fatai

OAG was shattered by the tragic death of it's Auditor General on 3rd July 2008. Floyd was a great leader and mentor and developed OAG to it's current strong position after years of neglect. Under his leadership OAG went from 3 staff to 35 and numerous reports have been tabled in Solomon Islands Parliament providing a blue print for reform in the entities. He will be sadly missed but left an institution determined to carry on his great work.

Skills Development

An integral element of the Capacity Building within OAG is the identification of skills required for staff to perform successfully their respective duties. Again, using an Audit Trainer all staff went through an intensive program of skills assessment and identification of future requirements. Ongoing assessments were undertaken in February and August 2008 which reflected a significant improvement by several staff against the model.

In addition to technical skills development, OAG staff have become increasingly engaged in internal management tasks, and have recently been fully participative in strategic planning for the Office for the next five years Strategic Audit Plan cycle.  This exposure is intended to provide the staff with the basic management skills required for career progression within the Office, as well as identify potential future senior managers for further development.

Auditor General’s Address

In conjunction with Transparency Solomon Islands the Auditor General gave a key note address launching his latest Audit Report on the topic of “An Auditor General’s Insight to Corruption within the Solomon Islands Government.” This was part of the World anti corruption day activities organised in December 2007.

Provincial Government Accounts

After some fifteen years or longer of malaise, the accountability within Provincial Governments received a boost following implementation of the RAMSI-funded Provincial Financial Management Improvement Project which resulted in the catch-up of 143 financial years of accounts to 31^st March 2007 for all provinces.  OAG was heavily involved in the management of the project, as well as responsible for conducting the audits of the later year accounts for each Provincial Government.  The impact of the project has been highly successful, with four of the Provincial Governments having already submitted their accounts for the financial year ended 31^st March 2008.  The OAG has already undertaken audits of those Provincial Governments and signed-off on two of those government’s accounts, and audits are currently underway on the remaining provinces’ accounts and records whilst waiting for their respective financial statements.

Statutory Bodies Accounts

As was the case for Provincial Government accounts, the statutory bodies in many cases had not been compiling or submitting their accounts for audit for many years.  The OAG has taken responsibility for the audits of some of the bodies which had been audited by private firms under contract to the OAG in past years.  In addition, the majority of the State Owned Enterprises [trading statutory bodies] are currently being assisted under a RAMSI-funded State Owned Enterprises Accounts Strengthening Project to bring all their accounts and audits up to date to Financial Year 2007.  The OAG has been heavily involved in the design process of the project, and will be responsible for managing the audits to be conducted under the project – these audits will be undertaken by an international audit firm under contract to the OAG.  It is anticipated that the project will be completed over the next twelve months.  Opportunities will also be taken during the project to expose OAG staff to the international audit methodologies practiced by this contractor firm as part of their technical skills development.