Audit plan of the National Audit Office for the period 2021–2025
The National Audit Office’s audit and monitoring operations are based on the audit plan. The plan includes performance targets for 2021, as well as resource calculations and a plan on the allocation of resources during the operational and financial period 2021−2025. The audit plan also serves as the operational and financial plan referred to in budget legislation.
Operating environment and resources
The audit and monitoring work of the National Audit Office of Finland (NAOF) focuses on topics and themes that are significant for central government finances and society, and on material risks related to central government finances.
The audit work of the National Audit Office is centred around four subject areas. Some of the audit themes or perspectives extend to several subject areas.
Audit operations: Sustainable General Government Finances
The impact area Sustainable General Government Finances consists of five areas: fiscal policy, central government asset management and investments, financing risks, ownership steering of state-owned companies and organization of central government operations, and regulation and monitoring of the financing sector.
Audit operations: Sustainable Governance and Public Administration
The themes of the development of public administration and sustainable development are linked with many administrative branches and activities. The key focus areas relate to the unity of the Government, the functioning and renewal of management and steering systems, competence development, and the use of information in decision-making.
Audit operations: A Safe, Healthy and Affluent Society
The audits conducted in the impact area focus on assessing the functioning, efficiency and impacts of different areas of an affluent society and their interconnections. The audits are often conducted from the perspective of indirect economic impacts.
The Information Governance area covers issues related to the common information flows in the management of central government finances, the reliability of central government data, the development of the cost-effectiveness of production, the improvement of State Group information, the management of central government risks, internal control, and compliance with the budget.
Monitoring and oversight operations: Fiscal policy monitoring
The ultimate goal of fiscal policy monitoring is to ensure that the fiscal policy and its preparation promote the sustainability of general government finances. The monitoring verifies the setting of fiscal policy targets and assesses compliance with rules and achievement of the targets. It also verifies the reliability of the forecasts on which the fiscal policy is built. Another goal is to promote transparent rules that are easy to understand.
Monitoring and oversight operations: Oversight of the legality of election and political party funding
As a politically independent actor, the National Audit Office is a credible and fair oversight authority in issues concerning election campaign and political party funding. The oversight operations can detect and prevent funding that is in violation of the Act on Political Parties or the Act on a Candidate’s Election Funding and thus influence the legality of election and political party funding. The oversight enables improper funding to be detected.
Digitalization of the audit and monitoring operations
The National Audit Office has launched a digitalization development programme for 2021–2023 in accordance with its strategy. The objective of the programme is to productize digital and data analytics solutions that will free our experts’ time for the actual audit work at all project phases – from planning to implementation and to making audit information available to our customers and stakeholders.
Through international cooperation and interaction, the National Audit Office is able to draw on the experience of other supreme audit institutions in its work and share its own expertise. This supports the efficient implementation and development of external audit and monitoring and thereby creates preconditions for a sustainable reform of public finances and administration both in Finland and internationally.
The HR policy is based on the values of the National Audit Office, and it implements the NAOF’s strategy. The HR policy is focused on and aims at competent and wellbeing personnel.
Competence development is one of the focus areas of the strategy period. Through competence development, we aim at obtaining abilities to do things in a new way and thereby create a new kind of organizational culture according to our strategy.
The target of the National Audit Office is to have societal impact. In order for the NAOF to achieve its impact targets, we have identified six performance targets.
