The Commissioner of Audit Ho Veng On led a delegation for Beijing, on October 10, for a meeting with the Auditor General of China, Liu Jiayi, and witnessing the signing of the “Cooperation Agreement on Developing the Field Audit System (Macau edition)” between the Commission of Audit (CA) and the Information Technology Centre (ITC) of China National Audit Office (CNAO). CA expects the agreement would provide the basis for a more intense application of information and communication technologies on audit works, in order to further raise the quality and efficiency of the audit projects conducted by CA.

The delegation was met by China’s Auditor General, Liu Jiayi, in the morning of 10 October. Ho Veng On said he’s grateful for the support CNAO has been extending to CA on various fields, namely with the organization of a set of technical courses specially oriented to some CA’s projects and, in general, by offering a series of training courses aimed at the formation of a qualified audit team; all this assistance has contributed to broadening the horizons and enriching the knowledge of the audit staff and, consequently, preparing them to better discharge their supervisory works. Ho Veng On also told the Auditor General that CA, taking as reference the experience of ITC, began last year making intensive studies on the viability of applying information and communication technology assisted audit (ICT audit) in order to make the human resources allocation more efficient and permitting CA to completely fulfill its supervisory role. According to plan, Ho Veng On continued, CA would gradually intensifying and broadening the usage of computer software in its audit works in order to keep up to the development of the e-government services. The signing of the “Cooperation Agreement on Developing the Field Audit System (Macau edition)” demonstrates the technical assistance CNAO has been conceding to CA’s works and also symbolizes CA’s financial audit works have stepped onto a new level of computerization.

On his turn, Liu Jiayi said he completely shares the CA’s vision concerning reinforcing staff training, building and consolidating the informatics basis and continuously refining auditing techniques. Liu Jiayi added that CNAO’s technical skills and training experience in ICT audit could improve CA’s works in this area and make them more efficient, which, in turn, would contribute to a government audit of higher quality. CNAO, Liu assured, would continue extending to CA support in ICT and in training; it would also explore new ways and types of training in order to aid CA’s audit staff to improve themselves, continuously and steadily.

ITC is the key technical unit in the conceptualization and implementation of the “Golden Audit Project” and, at the same time, the main designer and developer of software for the same project. The ITC possesses a highly skilled team of information systems technicians and rich and vast experience in developing software. The Centre designed and installed a very comprehensive computer audit system for CNAO, developed budget management programmes for departments and entities of the central government, a programme that is widely used for auditing financial services and a platform for managing special audits on foreign investment. All the above mentioned programmes and information systems are of crucial importance for CNAO’s works. The Field Audit System is one of the results of ITC’s research and is widely recognized in the audit sector. Basically, the programme is a working platform on which auditors could manage audit projects and collect and work with computer data when in field assignment. With the programme, auditors could prepare tables, examine the general ledger and conduct searches in the accounts. It also offers functions for preparing working papers, managing audit projects and controlling the quality of the audit works. The programme was created in 2004 and it became, today, an indispensable tool for auditors countrywide. Field Audit System (Macau edition) is a programme ITC and CA are jointly developing specially for Macau, which takes into account the specific conditions of the local public financial system and the necessities of the financial audit conducted by CA. In the first phase of the cooperation, both sides would mainly carry out works of programme design, system tests, defining and programming of future works, planning staff training and organizing maintenance services.

The signing of the “Cooperation Agreement on Developing the Field Audit System (Macau edition)” took place at CNAO. Wang Zhiyu, director of ITC and on behalf of this, and Neoh Hwai Beng, director of Audit Bureau and on behalf of the Macau Special Region, signed the agreement, which was witnessed by the deputy-director of CNAO, Dong Dasheng; deputy head for Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, Jiang Haiying; two deputy heads of CNAO, Sun Zhonghe and Xiong Wanjiao; and, lastly, deputy director of the Division of International Relations, Xing Jianfeng.

Following the signing ceremony, the delegation of Macau met with the deputy-director of CNAO, Dong Dasheng, and both parts exchanged views on the cooperation on personnel training and on other audit issues. The exchange was followed by a visit to the installations of ITC, during which Ho Veng On made himself acquainted with the operations of the Center and its advanced technological equipment.

During the stay in Beijing, Ho Veng On also met with the director of Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council, Wang Guangya, whom he gave an account on CA’s development in the recent years and the result of the cooperation with CNAO in the domains of personnel training and ICT assisted audit. Ho Veng On also expressed his gratitude to the Office for its liaising works with CNAO.

Wang Guangya underlined the great responsibility of CA in contributing to the transparent governance espoused by the Government of Macau and encouraged CA’s staff to adopt an innovative spirit and always striving for professional excellence in order to accomplish the mission of audit to the fullest. Wang referred that strengthening relationship with CNAO is beneficial to technical improvement of CA’s audit staff and therefore the Office will do its utmost to promote cooperation and exchange between both sides.

Ho Veng On said that CA is committed to the development of ICT assisted audit, expecting thereby to make the audit works more efficient and effective and, consequently, more audit projects — in number and in diversity — could be initiated. Ho also referred that, in recent years, CA has been doing more studies and researches on continuous audit. The application of ICT to audit works would create favourable conditions to a better allocation of audit personnel and thereby increasing the manpower for conducting different types of audits. Ho Veng On pointed out that CA started working closer with CNAO since 2010 and, from there on, good results have been achieved in the areas of personnel training and software design and development, contributing to lower the investment costs which, in a self-development programme, would be very significative. Furthermore, the cooperation also made the computerization process faster. At the end of the meeting, Ho Veng On renewed his gratitude for the involvement of the Office for Hong Kong and Macau Affairs in improving the relationship between CA and CNAO, which enables CA to draw from the potentials presented by the whole country to raise its competence and to explore new development venues.