The Commission of Audit (CA) has released the performance audit report “Effects of previous audit reports”, which conducted a comprehensive evaluation of all special audit reports and performance audit reports published between 20 December 1999 and 20 March 2017; and ranked the audit findings according to the risk level of high, middle and low. Among the 131 audit findings which were ranked as high and middle risk level, 26 were selected to be followed up, involving nine audit reports. The objective of follow-up work is to explore whether the auditees formulated measures to improve the problems and deficiencies in their work in order to increase the efficiency of their work and ensure the proper use of public funds. Moreover, CA followed up the work of DSAT on reviewing the service fees paid to the bus companies to ensure that it exercised the oversight responsibility, spent the public funds rigorously and protected the legal rights and interests of the Government.
The previous audit findings followed up in this report included: “Attendance & Supervision of Public Security Forces Staffs” (April 2004), “Management of Governmental Departments Publications” (December 2008), “Social Benefits and Management of the Business Trips of the Personnel of TDM - Television of Macau” (October 2010), “Greening Works of the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau” (November 2010), “Grants Awarded by Macau Foundation to Associations” (June 2012), “Continuing Education and Development Plan” (November 2012), “Using and Managing Tools for Prosecuting Traffic Violations” (February 2014), “University of Macau Staff Housing Allocation Regime — University of Macau’s Zhuhai Research Institute — University of Macau Development Foundation” (February 2015), “The Supervision on Financial Subsidy for Private Schools” (November 2015) and the investigation result on the bus service fees reported in “Public Service of Road Mass Transport” (May 2013).
The audit report pointed out that after the publication of “Management of Governmental Departments Publications”, IC who is responsible for the related work failed to actively follow up those problems, such as no complete written instructions, excessive printing of publications, no procedure for managing the publications in stock, large discrepancy in the costs of house programs and poor inventory management. Although the audit report has been published more than 10 years, IC did not establish a formal evaluation procedure for the publications launched until this follow-up work was basically finished, so the result of improvement is unsatisfactory.
Regarding the report of “The Supervision on Financial Subsidy for Private Schools”, the report discloses that when DSEJ verified the annual accounts of 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 academic years, there were five supplementary documents still expressed as items of miscellaneous and other income, which were impossible to identify the nature of the charges. However, the school supervisor only followed up by having telephone conversations with schools without requesting further documents for verification according to the established procedures of DSEJ, reflecting that the improvement mechanism was not fully implemented and the result is unsatisfactory. For the refund of the 26 items of improper charges indicated in the 2015 audit report, DSEJ stated that it had refunded three of them, while others were not fully refunded because some people were unable to contact with, some did not collect or declare not to collect after informing them. In this regard, DSEJ has clearly required schools not to count the relevant charges into income; however, CA found that DSEJ did not follow up other academic years that were not within the scope of audit and whether there were improper charges that should have been refunded or not, so it failed to ensure that the charges in other academic years were appropriate, reflecting DSEJ did not fully follow up on the refund problem.
The audit findings in the report of “Attendance & Supervision of Public Security Forces Staff” pointed out that the supervision on working hour records of staff was defective. In this connection, CPSP adopted the Electronic attendance system to record the working time of staff, and the record in system also can fully reflect the attendance of the military personnel who perform civilian work and the civilian staff. Meanwhile, the supervision measures adopted by CPSP can monitor the attendance of the above staff effectively. However, there are some staff still having been exempted from marking their attendance. The report also followed up in detail the problem of weekly working hours of military staff being lower than legal requirement. For the military personnel who perform civilian work, in addition to the normal 36 working hours, they have to provide eight hours of supplementary work per week. After CA realized this practice and reviewed the relevant documents, it found that CPSP failed to ensure that all staff met the legal requirement of providing 44 hours or more of work per week. Therefore, CPSP only formulated some measures to improve the problems found in 2004 audit report, but could not resolve them comprehensively.
Regarding the follow-up of the audit findings in the report of “University of Macau Staff Housing Allocation Regime — University of Macau’s Zhuhai Research Institute — University of Macau Development Foundation”, although UM already published the staff housing allocation regime in the Official Gazette of Macao Special Administrative Region, it did not publish the Regulations of Personnel Affairs because it still considered that the Regulations did not have external effects. This reflects that UM did not take comprehensive and effective measures to improve this problem.
Regarding the follow-up of the audit findings in the report of “Using and Managing Tools for Prosecuting Traffic Violations”, CA reviewed the citation management mechanism and found that the current citation is basically issued through the electronic citation device and will be automatically recorded in the system, so the possibility of losing citations is low. Regarding to the extremely small number of traditional handwritten citations, although CPSP would record and count the citations issued by the law enforcement units every month, it could not prevent the loss of citations that were issued but not used. Therefore, although CPSP has basically improved the problem of the citations management system, there are still deficiencies after the improvement.
Regarding the follow-up of the audit findings in the report of “Social Benefits and Management of the Business Trips of the Personnel of TDM - Television of Macau”, the daily management of TDM has changed to be executed by the Executive Committee instead of the Chief Executive Officer from December 2011. For medical benefits of the members of the Executive Committee, TDM has already revised in June 2011 and adjusted to be consistent with other TDM employees. Therefore, TDM has already made improvement to the relevant problem.
This audit report also analyzed the work of DSAT on reviewing the service fees paid to the bus companies, and confirmed that between December 2014 and mid-to-late 2015, DSAT completed the review on the service fees paid to bus companies in phases, and recovered the public funds overpaid to bus company A and B. However, regarding to the service fees unduly paid to bus company C, since bus company C filed for bankruptcy in October 2013, DSAT was unable to lodge a claim for the overpaid service fees during the period defined by law, but later it also did not consult the legal advice on the recovery of the fees or carry out feasible remedial work, failing to protect the claim. Therefore, there are deficiencies in the work of DSAT on reviewing the service fees paid to the bus companies.
In addition, since the results of improvement of audit findings in the three reports, including “Greening Works of the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau”, “Grants Awarded by Macau Foundation to Associations” and “Continuing Education and Development Plan”, are highly unsatisfactory, the audit report mentions that they would be followed up independently in order to have an in-depth analysis of the problems.
In the general comments of the report, CA indicated that one of the main purposes to audit and monitor the operation of public departments under the law is to ensure that public departments can make optimum use of public resources, and implement the work related to the society and people’s livelihood effectively according to their functions. In order to achieve the above objectives, it is extremely important that public departments have to cooperate actively, follow up the problems found in the audit timely and improve them on their own initiative. Through timely reviewing the improvement made by the auditees on the same problem, CA can disclose the bad practices, such as making mistakes without amendments, ignoring the significant problems and dwelling on the trivial ones, having a perfunctory attitude and being selective in improving the problem.
The report emphasizes that public resources are precious, so all public servants have to cherish them and strive to optimize the resources in daily work in order to avoid waste. This audit follows up the improvement made by the auditees and shows that many departments took the problems pointed out in the previous reports lightly and ignored them, which caused mistakes and omissions to exist in their functional areas for a long time instead of resolving these actively. If departments, especially those provide services involving people’s livelihood, do not manage their work well or make repeated mistakes owing to the failure to thoroughly review their problems, this will not only influence the efficiency in the use of public funds, but also damage the image of the Government, and even endanger the lives and safety of citizens. On the other hand, some departments did not have any plan for the implementation of policies, and regarded the poor performance that led to no result and the risk that caused by granting of subsidies as normal situations. They neither took the initiative to review and account for the situation, nor took advantage of the existing system to eliminate the problem, making the improvement suggestions officially put forward in previous audit reports unachievable. These departments have been in a dilemma and deceived themselves and others on the same kind of problem, hindering the improvement of their work and its stable development.
After following up the effects of previous audit reports in this audit, all departments should understand that the audit supervision will never be lax, and not paying attention to the problems does not mean that those will be solved by themselves. Audit is just a tool, and its purpose is to make improvement. Public departments must timely follow up the problems and suggestions presented in audit reports in order to improve them as soon as possible and make optimum use of public resources. Moreover, the most important thing is to let the residents feel that the administrative principle of the SAR Government is to serve the public and improve constantly, as well as the achievements it brings.
The report was previously submitted to the Chief Executive and it can be downloaded from the Commission of Audit’s website (http://www.ca.gov.mo), also it is freely available at the Commission of Audit Office from today during office hours.
