Opening Speech given by Karen Hill, Head of the SIGMA Programme, at the Roundtable on Independence of Supreme Audit Institutions held in Sarajevo on 8 September 2016 On the initiative of the Audit Office of the Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SAIBiH), the Network of Supreme Audit Institutions of Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries and European Court of Auditors .

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Roundtable on SAI Independence
Sarajevo, 8 September 2016
Dear Auditor Generals and Presidents,
Dear Vice-Presidents and Assistant Auditor Generals,
Dear Liaison Officers, ladies and gentlemen,
The last time that I had the pleasure of welcoming you as Head of SIGMA to this type of event was in
December 2013 in Budva. I am happy to see many familiar faces around the table today and, of
course, I welcome also all those who are new to this network.
Clearly independence is a fundamentally important issue for SAIs, with its recognition in the Lima
and Mexico declarations, and the March 2012 UN General Assembly resolution 66/209, promoting
the efficiency, accountability, effectiveness and transparency of public administrations by the
strengthening of SAIs and recognizing that SAIs can accomplish their tasks objectively and effectively
only if they are independent of the audited entity and are protected against outside influence. This
is further underlined by the Sustainable Development Goals contained in the United Nations Agenda
2030 and adopted in September 2015.
From the perspective of EU integration, the independence of SAIs is also included as a key
requirement in the Principles of Public Administration, developed by SIGMA and the European
Commission. The Principles define detailed requirements for a well-functioning public administration
and many of you will remember the baseline measurement exercise that SIGMA conducted in 2015
against these Principles. During this assessment we looked at the extent to which your SAIs meet the
key requirements that have been formulated for external audit, taking into account international
auditing standards and specific EU accession requirements. We specifically measured the extent to
which the fundamental requirement for a SAI’s independence, mandate and organisation is
established and protected by the constitutional and legal framework.
The conclusion was that while most of your legal frameworks are well established and protected,
your independence, including financial independence, is not always respected in practice by the
governments and public administrations of your countries. This has been reported in our country
baseline measurement reports and the EU progress reports.
I am therefore particularly happy about the initiative of our host SAI, the Audit Office of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, to organise this Roundtable to discuss some of the most important independence
issues amongst the heads of the SAIs. And I am very pleased that SIGMA is again in a position to
support the Network of Enlargement countries and the European Court of Auditors.

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Today’s Roundtable provides us with the opportunity to share experiences, discuss and think
together about possible solutions for situations where a SAI feels its independence is unduly
affected by the legal or administrative actions of other public stakeholders.
SAIs are often in a difficult position: although they cannot be absolutely independent because they
are part of the state as a whole, they still need to have the functional and organisational
independence that is required to accomplish their tasks. In this regard, I also think it is important
that we don’t view independence as an end in itself, but rather as an important element of ensuring
that SAIs are able to effectively carry out their mandate.
The interpretation and effective application of the concept of independence and the related
constitutional and statutory guarantees are significantly affected in practice by the specific political
and civil society structures and systems of the countries in which SAIs operate. The degree of
democratisation will also have a significant impact. SAI independence will be more difficult to
establish and safeguard in an environment where good governance and other proper checks and
balances do not work satisfactorily. In such situations the challenge for the SAI and other
independent oversight institutions to establish the requisite level of independence that allows their
institutions to achieve their objective will be much greater and consequently the need to work
towards these goals more urgent.
The questions these challenges raise may not always be legal, but more practical in the sense of
what would independence ideally look like and what is achievable in the specific circumstances of a
given country. But, no matter the specific challenges the Heads of SAIs need to exercise a lot of tact
and diplomacy and be very resilient as they work towards a satisfactory degree of independence
that allows their institutions to accomplish their tasks and mandates.
A lot has been published about independence and I am not only thinking about the International
standards of INTOSAI. But all these publications do not substitute direct discussions about concrete
cases and situations that affect your SAIs independence on a daily basis. However, I particularly liked
something that I recently read in the paper about “Making SAI independence a reality – some
lessons from across the Commonwealth”. It recognises that independence can not only be
something given to Supreme Audit Institutions but it is to be earned also. SAIs of Commonwealth
countries agreed that they need to work with others in parliaments, governments, civil society and
elsewhere to make the case for their independence and to gain support for the same. Equally SAIs
need to make sure that their own organisations are as good as they can be. They need to be making
sure that they are producing high quality, insightful audits which help improve public financial
management in their countries, and thus reduce waste and help in mitigating the risk of fraud and
corruption.
For 2017 a new round of SIGMA assessments against the Principles will take place. With the
experience of the previous round, we have seen that some of our indicators worked very well to
measure the state of affairs in your countries. However, we also saw that some of them worked less
well. We are therefore currently undertaking a full revision of our analytical methodology. Today’s
discussions are therefore also very interesting for me and my colleagues in this regard. They will help
us in reconsidering the way that we measure the extent to which external audit by the Supreme
Audit Institution (SAI) is conducted independently and the internationally recognised conditions for
the effective functioning of the SAI are found in law and practice.
For now I wish us all a successful day with fruitful exchanges and discussions.
Karen HILL, Head of Programme, SIGMA