Appendix B. Delivering financial audits

The Auditor-General undertakes financial audits for over 560 public sector entities each year. The Auditor-General uses VAGO staff to undertake around a third of these financial report audits. For the remaining audits, the Auditor-General contracts private sector firms (audit service providers) to assist. VAGO reviews this work and all audit opinions are issued on behalf of the Auditor-General. 

Attest audit work program

We deliver a range of attest services to public sector agencies. We conduct financial audits in accordance with the Australian Auditing Standards and relevant professional and legislative requirements. Additional information about the delivery of our financial audits is in Appendix B.

This section sets out our attest engagement work program for 2021–22. This encompasses reports to Parliament on the results of our financial and performance statement audits of agencies and the number and type of audit opinions we expect to issue.

Performance audit work program

This section sets out our proposed performance audit program for the next three years. In 2021–22, we plan to deliver 18 performance audits. 

For each audit listed, we outline the audit specification, which includes our objective for the audit, the issues we intend to examine and the agencies we expect to include.

Annual Plan 2021–22

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This annual plan sets out our proposed work program for the 2021–22 financial year.

Government Advertising

In 2019–20, the Victorian government spent $73 million on campaign advertising. Every year, government departments must report on any campaigns they have run, for which they spent over $100,000 on purchasing media placements. 

Our dashboard brings together this information for all government departments and the five government agencies that spent the most on campaign advertising for 2017–18, 2018–19, 2019–20 and 2020–21. It allows you to compare spending across departments and agencies, and conduct your own analysis.

Accessing Emergency Funding to Meet Urgent Claims

The Treasurer's Advance gives parliamentary and legal authority to the government to access funds to meet urgent expenditure claims.

By its nature, it is not aligned to any agency or output. Consequently, it is not subject to the parliamentary scrutiny that applies to the rest of the budget before it is spent.

Instead, Parliament can only authorise its use after any funds are spent. Due to this, there should be strong processes and controls over access to this funding and clear accountability to Parliament and the community on its use.

Responses to Performance Audit Recommendations 2015–16 to 2017–18

In our first Assurance Review, we looked at how public entities monitored and responded to performance audit recommendations made by VAGO between 2015-16 and 2017-18.

Nothing has come to our attention to indicate that overall, agencies are not effectively implementing past performance audit recommendations.

Most agencies report having governance arrangements that allow their senior management and audit committees to monitor progress in implementing our audit recommendations.