Simpler and faster auditing of more than 4000 state organisation accounts is promised as the Auditor General’s office hastens its electronic moves.
The government department is installing a web browser front end to its audit status database, which it says should remove much unnecessary manual input of documents.
IT manager Grant Johnson says from this coming July, the database — which was developed inhouse and has been in existence since 1992 — will receive electronic summaries of audits and other reports. Next year, the system will extend to full electronic lodgement of balance sheets, audit reports, letters to management and other documents.
Manual data entry has meant the office’s 55 staff can’t do as much auditing as they would like. Johnson says in recent years the database load has also become too big to handle, so its management was outsourced to the Simpl Group and Intergen.
Early work on the $150,000 project started two years ago. The upgrade is being done inhouse and uses SQL Server databases and .Net architecture; “nothing too leading edge”, says Johnson.
“Hopefully, we will gain efficiency from it, to get the free time to do what we are supposed to be doing, following up audits. At the moment a lot of our time is inputting data. We will be able to be proactive instead of being reactive.”
The Auditor General is responsible for auditing more than more than 4000 public sector entities, he says.