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The advisory board of CAGI has emphasised the need for modernising audit concepts and techniques and said that there should be greater awareness about accountability in order to strengthen audit work. The need for adopting procedures and processes of international standards was underscored at the board meeting held here. Work Flow Automation efforts with the help of experts was also reviewed.
The Comptroller & Auditor General of India, Shri V.N. Kaul briefed the meeting on new guidelines issued for conducting Performance Audit and for interactions with the Press, by the Accountants General, on Audit Reports. He urged the experts to suggest ways & means to improve the techniques and practices in the Audit Department.
Participating in the meeting, Shri Narayana Murthy, Chairman Infosys said that IT systems should be maintained against disaster and obsolescence & suggested adoption of consensual approach in creating computer environment. To a suggestion that IT companies are only offering partial solutions through introduction of technology instead of splicing together several initiatives including mapping the existing process, re-formatting the Management Information Systems, detailing new job responsibilities and cannibalizing the existing system. Shri Narayana Murthy said that this could be the approach in Government departments so that the results of the heavy investments are realised and productivity achieved.
Dr. R.K. Pachauri, energy expert, mentioned that almost 10% of the GDP is lost every year by the country on account of depletion of forests and depletion of soil leading to pollution and diseases. He recommended adoption of National Resource Accounting as a way forward. He mentioned Green India 2047 could be the objective before policy makers to preserve the environmental richness and variety. Shri N. Rangachari, former Chairman, CBDT recommended Systems Audit in place of individual assessment audit so that cost of tax collection and efficiency and effectiveness of the IT Department could be studied. Prof. Y.K. Alagh, former Minister and Member Planning Commission wanted Audit to take up a state of the art project in any one field and assess how environmental issues have been addressed as conjunctive views.
Dr. Abid Hussain, former Indian Ambassador to USA mentioned that technology power houses like China and India can bring significant changes in human history when men, money and systems are coordinated. He maintained ideas and systems are more important than individuals in bring about changes.
Shri J.S. Mathur, former Dy. Comptroller & Auditor General of India drew attention of the members to the mushrooming of autonomous bodies and the need for greater accountability.
After deliberations, the Board decided : (a) awareness about Accountability and Transparency should continually be increased if Audit were to realize the impact (b) in the process of modernisation, CAG should review his mandates, strengths and practices so that the suggestions made at the Advisory Board meeting could be taken on board (c) in computerising the work processes within the department, care should be taken to redefine the roles and retrain the personnel for the re-engineered processes (d) proposed Value Addition from Infosys for the workflow automation efforts of the department could seriously be considered & (e) suggestions made by Shri Rangachari, Dr. Pachauri and Prof. Alagh could be taken advantage of when Performance Audit is attempted in these particular fields.
Shri IIMS Rana, former Chairman Railway Board, Shri M.A. Pathan, former Chairman IOC, Lt. Gen (Retd.) D.V. Kalra & Shri Sunil Goyal, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India also participated in the meeting which was chaired by the CAGI.
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