Professional Development: Problems and Perspectives

1. Professional Development:Problems and Perspectives Danguolė SubačienėManager of Personnel Training DivisionNational Audit Office of Lithuania

2. The aim of this presentation: • to familiarise the conference participants with the present professional development system of the National Audit Office (NAO) of Lithuania • to draw attention to the weaknesses and problems of the present professional development system of the NAO of Lithuania • to introduce the proposed solutions

3. Related documents: • Lima Declaration (the SAI staff should possess the required qualifications; the SAI should provide for professional development of its personnel) • INTOSAI standards(the staff competence and qualifications should be of a quality appropriate to the complexity of a particular audit), the SAI should adopt policies to develop conditions for the training of the employees) • Recommendations for SAIs on European integration(each SAI should assure that its personnel possess the required competence to carry out audits in compliance with the international auditing standards)

4. Professional development system at the NAO of Lithuania • universities and colleges do not offer degree programs for external auditors in Lithuania • the NAO itself identifies the level and type of skills and knowledge that are appropriate to fulfil its audit mandate

5. Annual Professional Development Programme Factors taken into consideration: • individual professional development needs; • recommendations of the employee’s immediate superior; • orders of the NAO management; • NAO priorities; • experience and suggestions of the colleagues and experts from the foreign countries;

6. Annual Professional Development Programme Scheme of drafting the Programme SURVEY for the identification of the professional development needs conducted DATA PROCESSING The collected data processed and the draft Programme drawn up CONSIDERATION The draft Programme considered by the NAO Council APROVAL The Programme finalised and approved

7. Advantage of the Model • helps to deepen and identify the knowledge needed at the particular moment Shortcomings of the Model • not clear whether the knowledge thus acquired will be useful to the auditors working according to the requirements of the newly issued audit manuals and those specialising in a particular aspect of the audit mandate • such a model does not provide for systematic and continuing professional development of the auditors who need to acquire certain qualifications and certificates

8. Other problems related to the implementation of the NAO professional development policy • First, the staff training and development policy has been formulated after the Strategic Development Plan of the NAO of Lithuania was adopted, which means that hitherto we did not have any regulations concerning staff training and professional development process. • Second, the Regulations of the NAO on the Assessment of Officers, Qualification Categories, and Qualification Requirements for the officers of the NAO set the same competence profiles for all the auditors. In consequence, the auditors must possess competence in various aspects of the NAO audit mandate. • Third, we cannot identify whether the auditor possesses the competence required for the position he/she holds

9. Proposed Solutions The Strategic Development Plan of the NAO Aim: to develop an effective staff education and training system, which would assure that the competences of the employees comply with the applied requirements Objectives: • to give priority to the competence enhancement; • to encourage self-control and self-education of the employees; • to provide the staff with an an incentive scheme and training programmes which would motivate them to seek professional development; • to seek that the competences of the employees were adequate to the position they hold.

10. Tasks to be implemented (I) Task No 1: to define auditors’ competence requirements with regard to their job profiles; to verify whether the auditors’ competences comply with the applied requirements.

11. What are the benefit of using competence requirements? • It allows quickly and in a systematic way to identify competence development trends, which means that we can clearly define the knowledge requirements for each job profile; • It gives a possibility to identify the real competence of individuals and teams. Consequently, we will be able to define responsibilities for each employee; • We can easily specify the future needs of education and training; • It makes the staff more involved in competence enhancement.

12. Tasks to be implemented (II) Task No 2: to establish a gradual professional development for the employees seeking qualifications for government auditing; to introduce an incentive scheme.

13. Tasks to be implemented (III) Task No 3: to introduce a job rotation system. A job rotation system is an alternative method to enhance the competences of the staff. It can be introduced after the auditors have acquired qualifications adequate to their positions at NAO.

14. Task related to the professional development of the staff set forth in the Strategic Development Plan of the NAO of Lithuania

15. Developing competence is like shooting a moving target ! Everyones objectives: always minimize the gap between requirements and the individual (present) level of competence !

16. What do we expect from our co-operation with you? First , we need your assitance in developing training methodologies (including establishment of the traininga models and setting of the principles of the certification of auditors. This objective could be attained by: • arranging seminars; • inviting foreign experts having experience in this field to Lithuania; • organising visits to ypur SAIs with an aim to learn more about the professional development systems applied at ypus institutions

17. What do we expect from our co-operation with you? Second , we would like to deepen our knowledge in those aspects of audit that are comparatively new in Lithuania, namely perfomance audit, IT audit, computer-assited audit. This objective could be met by: • arranging seminars; • conducting joint audits both in Lithuania an abroad;