President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday called upon official auditor CAG to move towards outcome based auditing and provide ‘insight and foresight’ for improving Government programmes.
Inaugurating the 29th Accountants General Conference here, Kovind also appreciated the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) as an institution for graduating from promoting accountability to ensuring that right things are done in the right and least expensive way.
“Through your financial, compliance and performance audits, you have been providing valuable oversight on operations and giving recommendations for improvement. It is the time, the institution thinks of giving insight and foresight as well,” he told the Accountants General.
Stating that audit is not an end in itself, but a means to make governments work better, Kovind said there was a need to emphasise that outcome is a more meaningful measure of programme value than output.
“You may deliberate on how would you as an organisation identify, understand and measure outcome to study the impact of programmes.You may have to realign strategy in a manner that it measures outcome,” the President said.
Observing that a Government department is an ‘organic entity’, Kovind said any breakdown or deficiency in service reflects vulnerability in the system.
“As conscience keepers, please ask yourselves whether it would help to report on such soft spots and weaknesses in the system - or only on the symptoms manifesting in small deviations. Good systems outlast bad men and women. This is where you can contribute,” he said.
Audit provides an unique opportunity to the Government to see where the things are going wrong and why, he said, adding that CAG should share the good practices followed elsewhere for the benefit of executive.
“With the tools appropriate for managing and examining the expanding data in a digital economy, you are rightly positioned to anticipate long term trends and emerging issues related to the economy, education, health, environment , national security, among others,” he said.
