Nick Shandro authored Proposed Guidance for Audit Committees in the Public Sector before his recent retirement from the Office of the Chief Internal Auditor for the Government of Alberta.

This guide provides advice that is relevant for any board-governed organization in the Canadian public and not-for-profit sectors, as well as many private sector audit committees.

CCAF has released an Executive Summary of this publication in the Spanish language as Principios para la elaboración del informe ~ Llevando el informe de gestión del sector público a un nuevo nivel.

We take this opportunity to thank the Instituto de Desarrollo e Investigación en Auditoría y gestión (IDIAG) in Argentina and its president, Mr. Anibal Kohlhuber (a former 'Fellow' of the International Fellowship Program), for their efforts in the translation of this Executive Summary into Spanish, as part of the ongoing collaborative work between our two organizations in the areas of accountability, governance, management and audit.

At the second National Forum for Government Chief Internal Auditors held in Victoria, British Columbia on October 4-5, 2004, the chief internal auditors of Canada's senior governments learned, among other things, about the results of two recent legislative audits of internal audit functions and held discussions on such varied issues as internal audit standards and the placement of internal audit inside governmental organizations.

The forum focused on issues, strategies and best practices identified at the first forum held in November 2003, in Toronto. All chief internal auditors of Canada's provincial and territorial jurisdictions attended the event and the Acting Executive Director of the Centre of Excellence for Internal Audit represented the federal government.

The host of the event was Mr. David Fairbotham, Executive Director, Internal Audit and Advisory Services, Office of the Comptroller General of British Columbia. Mr. Jacques Lapointe, Chief Internal Auditor and Assistant Deputy Minister, Internal Audit Division, Ontario Management Board Secretariat, partnered with CCAF to make the forum a success.

The advice and guidance from this forum has provided valuable input into CCAF's research, and has established a solid footing for further discussion.

Valuing Internal Audit – Its Role in Improving Public Sector Performance and Accountability

This publication is a major output of our multi-year Public Performance Reporting Program. The principles that it recommends, and the practical resources it provides, support thinking, discussion and action by governments and other stakeholders who want to advance their public reporting to new levels of usefulness and credibility.

The Executive Summary is available on our website at no cost.

“Governing, Managing & Accounting for Results—Diagnostics for Effective Performance Reporting” is a compilation of a number of existing CCAF resources that have been edited, restructured and supplemented to allow users to progressively engage senior management and governing body members in 6 key ‘agenda’ items each of which is central to the results management-governance-accountability continuum. The package is flexible allowing users to ‘cut in’ where they need to.

This publication represents a consolidation of 20 years of development in performance reporting and comprehensive auditing and will provide a valuable resource for public sector executives, professional service providers, educators and students

Originally published as part of a series of applied research projects, reports such as these are available only in the language in which they were originally written. Although published some time ago, we believe this publication remains relevant to improving the quality of accountability for Canadian educational institutions.

This publication having until now, been available in printed format only, provides guidance on how governing bodies can assess and, if necessary advance their capacity to obtain the information they need.

March 19 & 20, 2001

Before our 20th National Conference which took place in March 2001, we commissioned Trent Gow of Thompson Gow & Associates to prepare a paper dealing with issues that would be on the conference agenda in order to stimulate thinking and dialogue around those issues in advance of the conference. Subsequent to the conference, we again commissioned Thompson Gow & Associates, this time to do a post conference wrap-up by preparing a summary of its proceedings.

Members and Subscribers to our site can now view the result of Trent Gow's distillation of the 15 major sessions that took place in which 47 outstanding public and private sector leaders presented their views.

We are pleased to publish this updated lexicon of terms related to governance, accountability and comprehensive audit concepts and thinking. We hope that it will be a valuable resource for professionals concerned with these matters.

There are three ways in which this lexicon has been updated since its original publication in 1996. First, terms have been added and definitions updated to take into account current usages among Canada's Legislative Audit Community in a document that was developed as an initial contribution by the Canadian legislative audit community to CCAF's public performance reporting program. Second, the updated lexicon introduces interactive features developed to enable users, at the click of a link, to access over one hundred terms. And third, we have incorporated a fourth language into our lexicon - in addition to English, French and Spanish, users can now access the our lexicon terminology in Arabic as well.

As one of our knowledge-sharing initiatives, we recently posted the transcripts of our 20th National Conference, which brought together close to 600 Canadian and international experts in public sector management, governance and audit. We also invited all conference delegates to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate the conference’s relevance and merit and are very pleased with the valuable insights their responses have provided.

On March 19 & 20, 2001 CCAF held it's national conference - "Building Excellence - Governance, Management & Accountability in the Public Sector" and welcomed almost 600 participants.

In this section you will have access to the session transcripts as well as the slide presentations made at this conference.

This publication provides an international perspective on auditor involvement in and responses to government initiatives to improve public performance reporting. It sets out the results of a survey of ten legislative audit offices. These offices operate under different models and at different levels of government. One feature that they share, however, is that Canadian legislative auditors see themselves as international leaders of audit practice. The survey explores their perceptions of the key implications for legislative auditors of better performance reporting by governments, and the range of current thinking, approaches and practices that they use to respond to these implications.

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE REPORTING PROGRAM – Public Performance Reporting: A Management Perspective

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE REPORTING PROGRAM – Going Public ~ Leadership for Transparent Government

This publication puts a spotlight on an aspect of public performance reporting that, while frequently acknowledged, has been little addressed — its human dimensions. It is based on the insights gained in interviews with over thirty leaders from across Canada.

As governments move to implement, strengthen and sustain public performance reporting, what strategic issues and challenges do they face? What is the current thinking and practice vis a vis public performance reporting, and what are considered the conditions for moving forward?

As governments and public sector organizations report more comprehensively and vigorously on performance, auditors are looking at key practice issues that need to be managed in order to respond effectively to a more robust public performance reporting environment.

In support of our program to help advance the quality of public performance reporting, we have conducted a survey of Canada's legislative auditors to determine how legislative auditors view these issues and how they relate to performance reporting initiatives.

This publication is the result of consultation with corporate directors and professionals, and other CCAF research. It focuses on three pivotal questions concerning governance information – that is, information that is useful to directors in helping them discharge their governance responsibilities. These questions are: What information about corporate performance is needed by directors? What qualities make such information useful? What can boards do to manage and obtain value from their governance information?

The document was developed to build on the work of The Toronto Stock Exchange Committee on Corporate Governance in Canada. It is based on the premise that there is much common ground and shared responsibility between Boards and management, and useful information is a key element of their relationship.

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) recently published "Audit Enquiry: Seeking More Reliable Evidence from Audit Enquiry". This important study will be of value not only to those who provide financial statement audit opinions but also to those who are engaged in different facets of comprehensive auditing. J-P. Boisclair, CCAF’s President served as a member of the research study Steering Committee.

We asked William A. Bradshaw FCA, a consultant to the above CICA study, to provide us with a perspective on the study. The research report is available from CICA.

Many of the issues that our research and activities address are issues that are of significant concern to governments, with respect to how they conduct their business, and to the public, with respect to how they perceive the government's performance and accountability. Effective management, governance, enhanced comptrollership, performance reporting, accountability, risk management – although sometimes given different labels – are all clearly critical, prevailing subjects of at times intense scrutiny, discussion and media coverage.

This publication provides a general overview to comprehensive auditing for members of public sector governing bodies, the managements of these organizations, and auditors and other professionals.

In March 2000, CCAF held a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Its theme was "Public Performance Reporting: Creating the Conditions for Success." This is a summary of those proceedings.

Read about a "first of its kind" management framework developed by the Treasury Board of Canada, and useful links in relation thereto, including the report of the Independent Review Panel on Modernizing Comptrollership in the Government of Canada.

The Report on the Independent Panel on Modernization of Comptrollership in the Government of Canada was released in October 1997 at the CCAF's National Conference. The Panel was created by the Government of Canada to help ensure effective management of public funds through a focus on excellence in Comptrollership and its integration with executive and managerial responsibility. CCAF President, J-P. Boisclair, chaired the Panel.

The Government of Canada subsequently adopted the Panel’s report, signaling political support for its recommendations. A number of important implementation initiatives have since been taken, and the Government continues to place high priority on this issue

Many of the issues and approaches discussed in the Report are to some degree applicable to other jurisdictions and public sector organizations and the view of modern Comptrollership advocated in it brings together a number of the key elements of performance information, accountability and audit with which CCAF's work has been concerned.

CCAF and the Ontario Ministry of Finance have co-sponsored a leaders symposium which brought together a small group of stakeholders, senior executives, governing body members and professionals for deliberations and counsel on issues related to the continued development of accountability initiatives in Ontario. Our two organizations came together through a mutual interest in accountability issues recognizing that evolution must continue to occur.

Key issues and questions addressed at the symposium include: the roles of key stakeholders in setting the accountability agenda; incentives for accountability; the role of assurance in the accountability process; and, implementing accountability: issues, strategies and conditions for success.

This collaborative effort between the Ontario Ministry of Finance and CCAF has yielded important insights and advice that will help stimulate and focus discussion about governance and accountability issues in relation to service organization receiving government funding.