The objective of the Emerging Issues and Forward Thinking portfolio is to highlight emerging issues in the work of EUROSAI and its members, to give support to strategy level discussions and to collect information for the Governing Board to debate upon. The key drivers related to our Portfolio are the profound and rapid changes in the operational environment, and the need to renew SAI work. The overall target is to support our work to be fit-for-future. The portfolio’s work tries to identify issues and aspects, which influence EUROSAI as an organisation, the individual SAIs and the audit field as a whole.
Key activities: The planned activities cover information gathering and analysis, facilitating common discussions through concrete inputs and background material and organizing workshops for EUROSAI members.
- Information gathering and analysis: NAOF engages in discussions and information gathering with EUROSAI members and SAIs of other EUROSAI regions, the IDI and INTOSAI. We monitor the work of influential emerging issues ad foresight communities, institutions, networks and think-tanks and take part in related seminars. NAOF completed an EUROSAI Emerging Issues web-based dialogue during September 2018. The web-based dialogue tool encouraged the participants to define and discuss the most important emerging issues for SAIs work in the 2020’s and how SAIs have taken the issues up in their audit work.
- Preparatory workshops: Emerging Issues Workshop for the members of the EUROSAI Governing Board and invited guests took place on 20-21st November 2018 in Istanbul with the kind assistance of the Turkish Court of Accounts. The workshop focused on how SAIs can better be aware of emerging issues relevant to audit work. The results from the Emerging Issues web-based dialogue were reviewed. The thematic areas included digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence and cyber security. The aim of the workshop was to provide insights for further EUROSAI work leading up to the EUROSAI XI Congress in 2020.