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Swiss Federal Audit Office publishes its 2014 annual report
Bern, 27.4.2015 – The Finance Delegation of the Federal Assembly and the Feder-al Council have taken note of the 2014 annual report of the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO). Around half of the capacity of the SFAO is taken up with statutory audits and audits of the annual accounts. The remaining resources are used for financial supervision, which above all examines economic efficiency aspects and thereby ultimately focusses on the use of taxpayers' money.
Also last year, the 170 or so completed audits covered a broad range of topics from construction and procurement audits and subsidy and IT audits to project audits and evaluations. Compliance with procurement requirements continues to be an issue where auditors repeatedly discover violations. Even in the utilisation of syn-ergies, whether this is within the Federal Administration or in interaction with the cantons, there is considerable potential. Weaknesses in the management struc-tures in various audited areas turned out to be another focal point. The offices con-cerned generally work readily and in a targeted way to remedy deficiencies, even if this requires drastic measures. Fortunately, information about conflicts of interest and serious technical shortcomings turned out to be unfounded in a number of cases.
The annual report has been redesigned. The facts should thereby be presented to a broad readership in a manner that is easier to understand and that is more enter-taining. Moreover, a number of recommendations from the parliamentary report on the INSIEME IT project have already been implemented. The report also lists the notification of anomalies to the Federal Council or significant deficiencies which had not been remedied by the promised deadline.
What specifically did the SFAO discover in 2014 at the Commission for Technology and Innovation or at the National Film Archive? What recommendations were made to the Federal Roads Office or to the Decommissioning Fund? What do things look like with the IT projects of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport or the Federal Department of Justice and Police? Was the criticism di-rected at the Main VAT Division or the Central Compensation Office justified? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in the annual report.
Mix & Remix sketches ... and those audited
This year, the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) asked the French-speaking cartoon-ist Mix & Remix to portray its work in images – completely independently and with the sharp-witted observations characteristic of him
Further details:
Michel Huissoud, Director of the SFAO, tel. 058 463 11 11- Details
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