With the aim of enhancing the quality of work done by the Papua New Guinea Auditor General’s Office (PNG AGO), the executive management of PNG AGO set up the Strengthening PNG AGO Project to carry out a performance assessment of the SAI using the recent version (January 2016) of the Supreme Audit Institution Performance Management Framework (SAI PMF) tool.  The SAI PMF is a global framework that enables SAIs to perform voluntary assessments of their performance against International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAIs) and other established international good practices for external public auditing. It is a universal tool which can be applied to all types of SAI regardless of governance structure, mandate, national context and development level.  

The Auditor General of PNG Mr Philip Nauga said “The project is not concerned with finding faults in the SAI, rather with identifying areas within the SAI that require improvement in order to assist the SAI achieve its mandated requirements.”

The SAI PMF Assessment is being conducted with the support of PASAI Secretariat and is a continuation of a week-long SWOT analysis conducted in August 2015 by Mrs Agnes Aruwafu, PASAI Director of Technical Support.  Following this the PNG AGO project team carried out the full SAI PMF assessment (endorsed version January 2016) for two weeks in March 2016 and gathered evidence to objectively assess each of the key domains of the PNG AGO.  Finally, during the week from 12-16 July 2016 the Strengthening PNG AGO Project Team worked tirelessly to analyse the scoring results and completed the overall report which was presented to the Auditor General’s representative on 16 July 2016.  The report was well received.

The PASAI Director of Technical support highly commends the dedication of the PNG AGO project team and their enthusiasm to embrace this initiative to strengthen the AGO and achieve the priorities of the Auditor General.  

The results of the SAI PMF Assessment is owned by the Auditor General who has advised that the assessment and the baseline data identified will be used to develop a strategic direction to achieve his vision of improving the capacity of his office to make a difference in the lives of citizens and audit for impact.