ORGANIZATION
Organization name: The Financial Audit Department (FAD)
Description: The Financial Audit Department (FAD) is the supreme audit institution in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Traditionally, the institution deployed financial, performance and compliance audits to all government departments, public corporations and companies in which the government holds more than 25% shares.
Sector: Financial Institutions
Staff: 100-200
Functional area: Performance Audit Custom Framework
Industry: Financial
Country: United Arab Emirates (UAE)
City: Dubai
SERVICE PROVIDED
Scope: Custom Performance Audit
Period: October - November 2016
Engagement Length: 2 months
CONTEXT
Overview:
Since 2015, FAD has decided to include in its audit framework a new element – the Performance Management System Audit. FAD’s auditing framework was under review for several years looking towards creating an integrated approach between different types of auditing.
The framework defined in 2015 contains 2 pillars: Financial and Performance Audit. The audit methodology chosen by FAD for Performance Management Systems is provided by The Global Performance Audit Unit operated by The KPI Institute.
Solutions:
- The survey and interview components were excluded from our Integrated Performance Maturity Model standard product to make the assessment more time effective and reduce the risk of collecting biased responses. The audit relies exclusively on rating best practices by verification of documents and discussions with the evaluated entity to clarify any matters related to the documentation sent
- The scoring and aggregation method was aligned with the rest of the 4 models in order to ease the assessment process for auditors
- The “N/A” option was introduced for those best practices that may not be relevant for the governmental entity
Outputs:
- The customization of the standard Performance Management System Maturity Model and audit procedure to address specific challenges when auditing governmental entities and to meet specific context requirement of the client
- A guidance document provides clear criteria for each document analyzed in order to be rated as “Practiced” “Partially practiced” or “Not practiced”
- Training programs were offered both as online and face-to-face:
o 3 hours of asynchronous online learning are available for FAD’s auditors on The KPI Institute’s eLearning platform and they can be accessed at any time. The videos cover the main performance management tools and processes
o 2 days face-to-face training was organized for 4 groups of participants (80 auditors trained)
RECOMMENDATION
"The Financial Audit Department (FAD) collaborated with the GPA Unit in customizing their Integrated Performance Maturity Model Framework to enable FAD in assessing the performance management systems in its subject entities, which include governmental entities and private organizations. The project involved both framework customization and training for FAD's auditors.
The GPA Unit's approach was focused on understanding our demand for workable solutions that would ultimately enable us to refine the framework. In doing so, the GPA Unit demonstrated flexibility and cooperation in creating an assessment that would fit auditing FAD subject entities.
The subject of the training program enabled our auditors to understand a new field for them; performance management, as well as the performance management system assessment toolkit to be used for auditing entities.
The GPA Unit was the right choice for the delivery of our program and we look forward to any future collaboration that may arise from here on. It is our pleasure to recommend the GPA Unit to any organization interested in assessing and, otherwise, improving their performance management."
Acting - Head of Technical Office
Talal El Hashemi
