Summary
The purpose of the Swedish NAO’s international development cooperation is to promote effective and efficient administration and a democratic development in developing countries. Through bilateral cooperation with audit institutions and regional cooperation with a group of audit institutions, the Swedish NAO also contributes to increased transparency and functioning systems of accountability. The results must of course be placed in relation to the difficult context in which our partners often operate.
The results report shows that the Swedish NAO in all essentials contributes to the purpose, mainly by strengthening the partners’ knowledge and processes related to financial and performance audit. To increase the institutional capacity to perform audits of good quality, the Swedish NAO also provides support in human resources, communication, strategic planning and leadership.
The analysis highlights some work methods that have been particularly successful for achieving results. We have been a relevant player in development cooperation by being flexible and by basing our work on our partners’ needs. Co-creation with our experts has contributed to a feeling of ownership among our partners, which is fundamental for creating long lasting results. Practical and hands-on support has led to relevant and needs-based initiatives. We also see good effects of involving the whole organisation in the activities, including responsible managers, since it increases the willingness to develop and the sense of ownership. Needsbased support requires a trustful relationship with each partner, which means that building relations is key to achieving results. Furthermore, we see that the regional and bilateral projects support each other. We bring these success factors into our continued efforts.
The regional and bilateral cooperation projects provide knowledge and methods that are valuable for our own organisation, which we also disseminate in global forums for audit institutions. This way we contribute to global methods within auditing.
This is the fourth results report on the Swedish NAO’s international development cooperation. This report supplements the annual report by describing in more detail how initiatives contribute to achieving the objective of our development cooperation. The results report builds on external evaluations and our own assessments of the operational results.
Preface by the Auditor General
This report presents the results and lessons learned from the Swedish NAO’s international development cooperation. The outcomes in our partner organisations are always a result of their willingness to develop and their hard work. Our role is to support our partners with knowledge and experience in order to promote sustainable development in their organisations.
I am proud to be able to say that we contribute to our partners’ development. Our evaluations show that competence and processes have been strengthened, and thus our partners’ ability to perform audits in line with international standards has increased. The quality of audit reports has improved, as well as the readability of most of the reports. We also see a higher level of maturity in our partners in areas such as communication with the parliaments and in the management of operations. This increases the likelihood that the results will be managed and contribute to the development of central government activities.
I would also like to emphasise that our cooperation projects bring us important knowledge and methods into our own organisation and to the forums in which we operate globally.
We pursue our activities in line with the Riksdag’s objectives for international development cooperation, and the cooperation contributes to the goals set out in the 2030 Agenda. A starting point for the 2030 Agenda is that all countries are to participate in the progress toward a sustainable society. For this reason, we give priority to initiatives for least developed countries’ audit institutions, which often operate in very difficult environments. That is where our cooperation can contribute to the greatest added value.
In recent years, we have strengthened the results-based management and evaluation in our organisation. We take the conclusions from it further into our collaborations and they are described in this report. I would like to stress a few observations from recently completed evaluations that have proved to contribute to our good results: our flexible and needs-driven work method, our focus on giving our partners close and practical support and our combination of working with both an audit institution and a regional group of audit institutions. We continue to build on this knowledge in order to remain a relevant actor in Swedish development cooperation.