According to RAA’s head of policy and planning division, Dorji Tenzin, they are preparing realistic annual audit schedules and rationalizing fieldwork. He said that RAA would lessen fieldwork by making use of Information technology. “We’ll start outsourcing auditing jobs and focus on government agencies,” he said. “We’ll also outsource auditing jobs to private firms and reduce frequency of audit for projects.”

Tashi Lhamo, an assistant audit officer said that frequency of audits on projects was reduced because they want to avoid ad hoc audits, which at times are confusing and complex. “We’ve now come up with a new audit manual and new concepts of auditing like environmental, IT and system auditing, which will raise the work of auditing to a new level,” she said.

he prime minister, Lyonchhen Jigmi Y Thinley, addressing the gathering of auditors on the opening of the 11th annual audit conference, said that RAA should make an effort to ensure that the principle of value for money encompassing economy, efficiency and effectiveness is observed in government operations. “Equally, there’s an important need to exercise reason and judgment on their part,” he said.

The prime minister said that, while it was the responsibility of auditors to detect fraud, waste, and abuse, they must, at the same time, avoid creating a climate of excessive suspicion and animosity. “Care should be taken in the kind of language that is used in the reports, as well as in the tone of the reports,” he said. “ Although the reports may be mindful, it has been seen that sometimes audit reports tend to appear unnecessarily accusatory and confrontational, both in tone and language.”