The higher education and training sector is meant to contribute to skills development and job creation and, as a result, is a strategic priority area for government. However many higher education and training initiatives being rolled out nationally, the skills challenge and unemployment among tertiary graduates persists.

We established through our audits that the significant amounts earmarked for higher education were not spent on scarce and in- demand skills that can accelerate economic growth. In addition, the systems of sector education and training authorities (Setas) are not interlinked resulting in duplication of efforts including interventions that are focusing on the same learners.

As part of our influence work, we held engagements with the executive authority in higher education and training and shared our insights from our audit work, which could assist the department to improve its operating approach.

Following the elevation of these insights (and our related recommendations on them), the minister announced that the department would reconsider the comprehensive funding model, particularly for NSFAS, to prioritise funding efforts towards scarce and in-demand skills.

The department also responded positively to our recommendation to integrate setas systems to enable integrated planning and streamlined operating processes. The Setas have begun to focus their efforts on finding IT systems to link their operations and collecting repositioning information to ensure collective impact. These efforts will go a long way towards addressing the skills gap and unemployment among graduates in the country.

Our teams continued to raise concerns directly with the Presidency, Department of Planning and Monitoring and Cogta highlighting the detrimental effects of delayed capacity building and, lack of strategic integration of projects, ineffective presidential task teams, and delays in implementing government Medium-term Strategic Framework (MTSF) priorities. Following our engagements, these efforts saw relatively quick action plan, as Cabinet began working on a comprehensive improvement plan to tackle coordination challenges across government sectors, including directives by DPME to guide the planning and development of annual performance plans in line with MTSF.

In the municipal space, through persistent influence engagements with accounting officers, coordinating institutions, such as provincial treasures, and auditees’ oversight structures, we saw a marked improvement in the submission of financial statements by the legislated deadline. These improvements were also due to accounting officers responding positively to our MI notifications on the matter of on-time submission of annual financial statements, as well as provincial government supporting municipalities to act on their submission commitments. This is a clear example of the improvements we can see within auditees when all stakeholders within the accountability ecosystem play their part.

Extensive effort by both our national and provincial teams advanced the infrastructure sector by showcasing our infrastructure insight and working with stakeholders to take decisive action to address the lack of planning and coordination, weak project management and financial loss due to projects going beyond contractual periods.

We influenced accounting officers and authorities and the members of executive committees across the provinces to prioritise the implementation of our recommendations. In some provinces, this led to schools being operational again and some municipalities submitting plans on maintenance and upgrades to improve the state of water infrastructure.

Since we shared our insights from occupational health and safety assessments, emphasising the department’s efforts to implement processes aimed at advancing the realisation of ideal clinics and hospitals, we have observed a slight improvement in occupational health and safety practices, particularly at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, with fewer defects and security concerns compared to the previous year.

Throughout the year, we focused on increasing engagement with CSOs to strengthen audit risk assessments and reinforce audit messaging.

Significant progress was made, as evidenced by accelerated progress and strong engagement with several influential CSOs.

Furthermore, the execution of all actions outlined in the CSO implementation plan established a successful trajectory for the AGSA-CSO partnership programme. The year saw significant progress in improving engagement with CSOs across various sectors and forums. Key achievements included convening strategic meetings with forum and sector leaders to advocate for CSO inclusion, developing tailored engagement plans for sector and forum collaborations, and establishing comprehensive reporting mechanisms to monitor CSO engagements. Soliciting feedback on the efficacy of our CSO engagement facilitated iterative improvements, while initiatives like webinars and the dissemination of updated frameworks via the intranet page improved AGSA-CSO accessibility and collaboration.

Our influence extended to significant and extensive engagements with the Asivikelane initiative on the critical aspect of basic service delivery in metros. Asivikelane is an initiative that convenes multi-stakeholder hubs of informal settlement residents, government officials, community organisations and other stakeholders, such as ourselves, as the national audit office, and training colleges to collectively deal with the service delivery issues experienced by informal settlement residents. This led to them collaborating on onsite inspections in informal settlements and a focus on exploring practical solutions for metros to tackle issues related to infrastructure maintenance to create meaningful and sustainable improvements in basic service delivery.

Looking ahead, the AGSA is committed to refining its approach to CSO engagements, as well as ensuring ongoing optimisation and risk mitigation, to uphold the pillars of accountability, transparency and integrity in its operations.

During 2023-24, we continued our efforts to strengthen our influence in the international space. Our impact in the Intosai capacity development community is good, with the CBC taking a leadership role to coordinate and influence the capacity development work plans of all the major players in this community.

For the first time, Intosai adopted a consolidated operational plan for capacity development for 2023 to 2025. The CBC’s influence in elevating topics that affect supreme audit institutions such as competency-based professional development, quality management and unpacking the concept of the relevance of auditing is clearly visible in the 2023 Intosai Global Stocktake Report that will inform a first baseline assessment of this operational plan later in 2024. 

Through our CBC leadership, we also increased our visibility as a leader in standard-setting. We played a key role in finalising the development plan for standards for the next three years, with emphasis on the need to refine work at the level of organisational principles in the Intosai framework of professional pronouncements, and on bringing order to the way that Intosai thinks about providing guidance on executing audits in the global community. Further indications of growth in this area include research on behalf of supreme audit institutions in the small island development states and in complex and challenging circumstances, and evaluating the appropriateness of auditing standards for this community.

 We were successful in taking on new international audits that enhanced exposure opportunities for our audit teams. These included the audit of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) and the African Organisation of Public Accounts Committees (Afropac).This commitment reiterates one of our key employee value propositions – to provide meaningful career development opportunities.

 As a key roleplayer in the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), our influence achieved the indicator that we, as a supreme audit institution, are increasingly active in driving the message of clean administration internationally.