The Gold Coast City Council’s Internal Audit Strategic Peer Review and Implementation Project has provided a reinvention of the focus and function of internal audit.
Prior to the project, Council’s Internal Audit section produced thoroughly researched reports to the senior executive, but left implementing its recommendations to business areas.
Corporate Risk Manager Garry Webb said the value of internal audit could be questioned if there was no assurance that recommendations would be implemented.
“It goes to the heart of good governance to have an open and transparent audit and risk management system,” Garry Webb said. “We sit down with the managers individually and then have a workshop with the group to develop a comprehensive risk management approach,” he said. “Further, much effort was spent on traditional internal audit function areas such as cash handling, purchasing and financial transactions due to the high risk of fraud and corruption.”
The Strategic Peer Review, however, showed that the areas with the highest impact were more likely to be in areas of greater risk to Council as a whole. For example, the prolonged drought in south east Queensland has had a major effect across Council’s operations with financial implications many times that of any cash transaction processes.
In addition, the more consultative, less confrontational approach of the peer review has ensured that people or areas being audited could now make greater disclosure, secure in the knowledge that the audit function is no longer there to ‘catch’ them.
“Recommendations made in audit reports now are those things which auditees are unable to implement themselves and therefore require senior executive intervention,” he said.
He said along with greater quality assurance afforded by the documented methodology are now producing far greater returns to Council and much greater levels of satisfaction from ratepayers and auditors alike.
For further information contact Manager Corporate Risk, Garry Webb, on (07) 5581 6654 or email gwebb@goldcoast.qld.gov.au
