Have the Czech SAO’s Audits Carried out in the Area of the State Budget Revenues Resulted in a Higher Number of Legislative Changes when Compared to the Audits in the Domain of the State Property Management ?

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to compare the results of 4 selected audit areas of the SAO, namely audits carried out in the domain of the state budget revenues, state property, state-owned enterprises and state funds. The hypothesis is that the findings of audits on the revenue side of the state budget have resulted in the largest number of legislative changes within the period under review. As part of the assessment of the development of the impact of the SAO activity measured by the number of government-imposed corrective measures, it was also found that the benefits of audit findings have increased and their usability has risen noticeably since 2005. By analysing the selected audit areas, the first established hypothesis was confirmed when it was found that the largest number of legislative changes was made in the area of the state budget revenues. In this domain, areas of system failures and implementations of the imposed recommendations were analysed additionally, with the aim to uncover the most problematic areas and to assess the overall implementation of the imposed recommendations. The hypothesis in this respect was that the recommended remedies were mostly met. Within the area of the state budget revenues, based on the publicly available information and the auditees’ opinions it was found out that most of the recommendations were met. The second hypothesis was met, as well. The presented paper analyses both the government’s resolutions, audit findings and conclusions, annual reports, EU reports, and selected views of the auditees. Within the audit areas, the number of submitted criminal notifications and notifications to the tax authority is also quantified. The usefulness of the results is based on the fact that the audits in the assessed areas were focused on the audit of legality with elements of the performance audit, though the best results in the domain of legality were brought by audits in the area of the state budget revenues. In this domain, it is therefore appropriate to focus more on the audit issues related to legality, as evidenced by the number of corrective measures in which the government has imposed a legislated solution to the given issue. Conversely, for audits of state assets (the remaining three groups), it would make more sense to strengthen the focus of these audits on the performance-related risks (the so-called 3E).