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Cape Town - The 2009/10 audit reports tabled in Parliament and the various legislatures indicate that much progress is being made towards clean audits, Auditor General Terence Nombembe said on Friday.
The findings this year were very promising, he told a Cape Town Press Club and Parliamentary Press Gallery Association lunch.
"Very promising, because if you look at the national government results, there is no department that has got a disclaimer, which is an area we would like to see no department ever having in the South African context.
"When you look at the provincial governments, many departments have moved away from disclaimers... there's only about ten throughout the provinces that got disclaimers out of about 123 or so departments in the provincial setting.
"That's a result that needs to be looked at very closely to say how do you get rid of any form of disclaimer in any form of government department in South Africa," he said.
If one looked at the concentration of these disclaimers, they were largely in big departments, such as health, education and in some instances public works.
But, there was a bigger concentration of departments that got unqualified financial statements, "which is where we are heading towards, which is clean reports without any qualifications, without any modifications".
In national government, there were four departments that had achieved that status, and at provincial level, there were 14.
"So the number is still small, but the fact that there's a bigger concentration at the level of unqualified reports is something that's giving us the hope that we are getting closer to the response and the results we are looking for," Nombembe said.
The obstacles were two-fold. Firstly, the extent to which departments still needed to improve their compliance conduct.
The extent to which departments eliminated things that deviated from the laws and regulations prescribed either by the legislatures or National Treasury.
Issues of compliance
"And if we can place a lot of concentration in that area, we will have a quicker migration towards clean audits," he said.
The second area was the extent to which service delivery information and controls around it were being managed and reported in government.
Those were the two issues that had given rise to modifications in audit reports up to now.
"We've been very specific about these this time around to demonstrate that a lot of work has been done to eliminate most of the other matters that may have arisen in the past, and confine them to just these two areas, which if we can give it greater concentration in government, it would help a great deal in reducing the concerns we have," Nombembe said.
Regarding compliance, there were two main issues of concern.
Firstly, the extent to which errors in financial information were corrected at the time of audit.
Chief financial officers had to be "a lot more regular" in the way they prepared information and not wait for the audit period to make corrections, he said.
The other area needing correcting was that of supply chain and procurement.
"Here, once again, what we are looking for is a situation where the clearly defined procurement and supply chain management procedure are complied with at all costs, at all times, in all government departments.
"Once again this is going to require closer monitoring at the level of the leadership to make sure that deviations do not happen at any time," he said.
Another issue, to understand why "we are still stuck where we are stuck at the moment", was human resources.
The analysis demonstrated that there was still a high level of vacancies at senior management level - 30% on average and up to 60% in some departments.
These were levels where supervision, monitoring and guidance had to take place.
"Unless that is fixed, we'll continue to have these shortcoming, because there aren't sufficient people in the supervision that is taking place in most government departments."
Financial management capacity also needed much more attention, Nombembe said.
The findings this year were very promising, he told a Cape Town Press Club and Parliamentary Press Gallery Association lunch.
"Very promising, because if you look at the national government results, there is no department that has got a disclaimer, which is an area we would like to see no department ever having in the South African context.
"When you look at the provincial governments, many departments have moved away from disclaimers... there's only about ten throughout the provinces that got disclaimers out of about 123 or so departments in the provincial setting.
"That's a result that needs to be looked at very closely to say how do you get rid of any form of disclaimer in any form of government department in South Africa," he said.
If one looked at the concentration of these disclaimers, they were largely in big departments, such as health, education and in some instances public works.
But, there was a bigger concentration of departments that got unqualified financial statements, "which is where we are heading towards, which is clean reports without any qualifications, without any modifications".
In national government, there were four departments that had achieved that status, and at provincial level, there were 14.
"So the number is still small, but the fact that there's a bigger concentration at the level of unqualified reports is something that's giving us the hope that we are getting closer to the response and the results we are looking for," Nombembe said.
The obstacles were two-fold. Firstly, the extent to which departments still needed to improve their compliance conduct.
The extent to which departments eliminated things that deviated from the laws and regulations prescribed either by the legislatures or National Treasury.
Issues of compliance
"And if we can place a lot of concentration in that area, we will have a quicker migration towards clean audits," he said.
The second area was the extent to which service delivery information and controls around it were being managed and reported in government.
Those were the two issues that had given rise to modifications in audit reports up to now.
"We've been very specific about these this time around to demonstrate that a lot of work has been done to eliminate most of the other matters that may have arisen in the past, and confine them to just these two areas, which if we can give it greater concentration in government, it would help a great deal in reducing the concerns we have," Nombembe said.
Regarding compliance, there were two main issues of concern.
Firstly, the extent to which errors in financial information were corrected at the time of audit.
Chief financial officers had to be "a lot more regular" in the way they prepared information and not wait for the audit period to make corrections, he said.
The other area needing correcting was that of supply chain and procurement.
"Here, once again, what we are looking for is a situation where the clearly defined procurement and supply chain management procedure are complied with at all costs, at all times, in all government departments.
"Once again this is going to require closer monitoring at the level of the leadership to make sure that deviations do not happen at any time," he said.
Another issue, to understand why "we are still stuck where we are stuck at the moment", was human resources.
The analysis demonstrated that there was still a high level of vacancies at senior management level - 30% on average and up to 60% in some departments.
These were levels where supervision, monitoring and guidance had to take place.
"Unless that is fixed, we'll continue to have these shortcoming, because there aren't sufficient people in the supervision that is taking place in most government departments."
Financial management capacity also needed much more attention, Nombembe said.
