Provided at the Office of the Audit...

Provided at the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia

As many of you will have heard, in April 2003 the Legislative Assembly passed a just discovered Auditor General Act. The recently made known Act is one of a series of changes enacted through legislators to ensure a more rigorous and objective scrutiny of restraint performance. To fulfill this goal, legislators have endorsed the adoption of generally accepted accounting principles; a more active regularity of standing committees; a requirement for sway organizations to annually publish service plans and performance reports; and a management and reporting method that is focused on outcomes These changes, among others, will help the Legislative Assembly and the Auditor General better benefit the public of British Columbia.

The revised Auditor General Act contains one items that may be of interest to members of the public accounting profession. The Auditor General intends to work with the profession to provide effective and efficient financial statement audit services to regulation organizations, and thereby assist control in discharging their accountability obligations to the Legislative Assembly.

The strange Act assigns to the Auditor General the responsibility of auditing the government's summary financial statements. in subordination to the new Act, these statements are the solitary ones the Auditor General will audit consistently. The stillness of the audit universe-Crown Corporations and entities of the like kind as health authorities, universities, and drill districts-will be audited primarily on private sector audit firms, with the Auditor General performing the audit of any government organizations' financial statements each year forward a rotating basis.

The fresh Act also allows the Auditor General to elected to perform the financial statement audits of a recent government organization in any of its first three fiscal years (its critical start-up period).

All financial statement audits performed by means of the Auditor General are limited to a station period of time-no more than five consecutive years. Afterward, the audit work is to be done by way of private sector auditors, with the Auditor General periodically performing the audits onward a rotating basis.

Under the novel Act, the Auditor General will disentangle a plan for the mode of action of the financial audits of all organizations and trust foundations that are part of the regulation reporting entity. The Auditor General will confer with government organizations in preparing the plan and will current it to the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislative Assembly for its endorsement.

This plan will describe the propos audit coverage, setting without which entities will be audited according to the Auditor General and which by dint of private sector audit firms. For those organizations not audited by the agency of the Auditor General, the just discovered Act stipulates that the Auditor General can influence the work performed by way of private sector auditors of conduct bodies and trust funds.

For a link to the abounding text of the new Act, as well as information forward the other changes made through the Legislative Assembly this spring, visit: http://www.bcauditor.com/AuditorGeneral.htm. This website also put forwards information on the role of the Auditor General, as well as copies of the Office's Service Plans and Annual reports.

Copyright Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia Aug 2003

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved