Pretoria - The Auditor General's office is to conduct quarterly reviews of government departments in order to detect early warning signs of trouble.
"Quarterly reviews will help to give us earlier warning of whether the action plans are being taken care of," Auditor General Terence Nombembe said on Wednesday.
He was briefing the media on how national and provincial government departments performed in the 2009-10 financial year ahead of briefing the National Assembly.
This will be the first time that quarterly reviews are carried out as reviews are carried out once a year.
The quarterly reviews will focus on what was identified in the Auditor General's previous reviews as well as other issues.
Though there is a trend to move towards clean audits, qualified audits still continue. Nombembe, however, acknowledged that there is action taken in order to rectify this. At provincial level, departments still have disclaimers as in the Eastern Cape, North West, Gauteng and in the Free State.
The disclaimers are confined to the health and public works departments.
Movement towards unqualified reports is constrained by compliance with laws and regulation (with contraventions happening in regular expenditure) as well as in the effective reporting on service delivery issues.
"We need to see improvements in the way things are reported ... [and] how strategic plans are carried out," said Nombembe.
Issues pertaining to asset management, particularly immovable assets like land, also need improvement by departments. The Auditor General also expressed concern at human resource management in departments, including reliance on consultants, leadership monitoring (including monitoring by ministers and MECs), which he explained as being "lower than desired."
Departments should also encourage better document management, as well as the understanding of information flow should be encouraged by the leadership.
"These issues sound elementary but they [hold] us back," the Auditor General said.
According to the General Report on National Audit Outcomes, R831 million worth in irregular expenditure was identified by government departments, while 58 public entities also incurred fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
