Audit Report

At the end of each fiscal year, a country’s Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) performs an annual audit of the final accounts. The Audit Report is a document produced by the SAI as a result of its audit activities, and evaluates the completeness and accuracy of the information included in final accounts, and the adherence of the government’s financial management and accounting to existing laws and procedures. The SAI plays a vital role in holding the executive accountable to the legislature and the public. In its oversight role of the executive's stewardship of public funds, the SAI in many countries performs financial, compliance, and/or performance audits.

The Lima Declaration of Guidelines on Auditing Precepts (Chapter VI, Section 16 (1)) makes it clear that the auditor’s annual report should be published and made available to the public. According to OECD best practices, the SAI should complete these audits within six months of the end of the budget year for administrative units (that is, ministries, departments, or agencies).

Assessing the public availability of the AR
Publicly available budget documents are defined as those documents that are published on the website of the public authority issuing the document within the time frame specified in the OBS methodology and that all citizens are able to obtain free of charge. (See the Open Budget Survey Guidelines on Public Availability of Budget Documents.) This is a change from previous rounds of the Open Budget Survey: now at minimum documents must be made available on the Internet and free of charge to be considered publicly available.

The OBS methodology requires that for an AR to be considered publicly available, it must be made available to the public no later than 18 months after the end of the fiscal year to which it corresponds. If the AR is not released to the public at least 18 months after the end of the fiscal year to which it corresponds, option “d” applies. Option “d” should also be chosen for documents that are produced for internal purposes only (that is, produced but never released to the public) or are not produced at all. Some governments may publish budget documents further in advance than the latest possible dates outlined above. In these instances, researchers should choose options “a” or “b,” depending on the date of publication identified for the AR. See Question AR-2 for more information.

Questions on the AR in the OBS

 * Questions on the AR in the OBS