internal audit
There is a old "new" management wave roaring through the organisational straights again, and it is lapping up on the shores of public administrations. I'm talking about the workplace democracy model that was made famous by the success of Brazil based Semco in the 1990'
audit academy
In the short period of 1999 to 2003, the Belgian federal government was making some real progress, at least conceptually, in improving its functioning. The Copernicus reform, which eventually failed, had some essential ideas on how to turn the Belgian federal public sector into a (reasonably) lean organisation. Come the
internal audit
The contract killer I've known quite a few internal auditors who took pride in the number of people they managed to take out as a consequence of their audit reports. The arguments? Most often they argued the people had failed to do what they were told to do
audit academy
There is a lot of information available on academic note taking Good note taking is a craft all by itself. Look at any website of any itself respecting college or university and you will find at least one class on advanced note taking skills. Do a search on the web
Basecamp
I've been surprised by the level of interest about my recent post on using Basecamp as the base application for internal audit working papers. While by no means a representative sample, I feel the interest indicates that current working paper solutions fail to address a number of concerns
documentation
Looking for better methods I was recently reading a paper by Kieran Healy of Duke University on workflow applications. I am always on the lookout for workflows that simplify or optimize our way of generating reports and this one came highly recommended by Dr. Drang, so I had to go
bias
Introduction I really enjoy reading an audit report or audit working papers because quite often we see the cognitive biases of the auditor at work. Let's be clear, I am as much a potential victim of cognitive biases as any other auditor. However, being aware of their existence
internal audit
Most audit reports are too long Most of the internal audit reports I have read in my life have one thing in common. They are just too long. Sometimes I get the feeling that internal auditors need to motivate their existence by the sheer amount of paper we produce. Because
internal audit
Steps to understanding a process Gaining a clear understanding of the functioning of a process or how it aligns with tactical or strategic objectives of an organization is not necessarily the easiest challenge for an auditor. Often, the counterparts interviewed are not fully aware of either why they do what
data analysis
Back to the past I still remember the time when we had to audit large data sets by hand. You may think that is a long time ago, but I'm talking about the mid to late 1990s. That was in my youth as an auditor. I remember spending
Basecamp
Ah, old times! I was brought up as an internal auditor in a day and age when computer aided auditing was still to become mainstream. I know that dates me, but so be it. My first years of auditing consisted of performing audit tests as described in a paper work
internal audit
A couple of days ago, the president of the Belgian federal audit committee announced that he was resigning because his committee did not receive the required support from the government to allow it to achieve its objectives. He was quickly supported by at least one high profile president of a