Loimer Hannes | BlogSpot | Peer Reviewer becoming Peer Reviewee
The ACA sees itself committed to the Peer Review ideas and its values; in theory. Practice shows, that decisions about Peer-Review-Participations are, irrespective of active or passive involvement, heavily influenced by the (perceived) availability of resources or rather the lack of these and an insecurity about the scope of a review-project, which is not perceived as an essential, “core” business of a SAI and thus distracts from daily audit routine. And there maybe dozens of additional reasons such as an information mismatch between willing reviewers and reviewees or just insecurity to reveal “inside” information. Some of these may be overcome, possibly by encouragement from the Sub-committee on Peer Reviews, others may be not.
However there seems to be a spark, which may help keep things going: When, after our involvement in the Review of the SAI Indonesia in 2024, together with German and Swiss colleagues (not too long after reviewing Romania 2022), it became evident that we would host a Review here at the ACA in 2025, we just passed on the flame and stayed in a Peer-Review mindset:
We defined a small team and were extremely open concerning information towards our reviewers (from the UK and Germany) and a certain level of curiosity as to why are we doing things and how other might see this, certainly helps in the process. And on a side note; some things do get easier: videoconferencing and desk reviews can be a significant contribution to project focus and to narrow travel time and costs. Automated translations have helped to reduce our expected burden of translation for piles of documents; for sensitive information there are local solutions or accounts.
So regarding Peer Reviews we were lucky to maintain a momentum of activity and keep the ball rolling, so to speak. Does it all pay off? We are semi-convinced. Having someone else come in and look at your internal processes and procedures is a value in itself and trying to explain a third party why things are or have to be the way they are can lead to astonishing as well as bewildering explanations.
How will we (or will we?) react to upcoming review-results about our own work? Now, that may be a different story entirely but we bear in mind that the ACA has evolved since our last in-house-review in 2010. And there will be a possibility to report more when the process is finished in 2026.
#Resources #ScopeInsecurity #Encouragement #Subcommittee #SmallTeam #DeskReviews #AutomatedTranslations #ExplanationExercise #MoreToCome