We go through an analysis of the risks of the department. It's an exercise that we conduct probably about every four or five years in the departments, presuming that there aren't major changes, obviously, in their mandates and their organization. It is a very extensive exercise, where we interview people within the department, but also stakeholders outside as well, to try to assess what are the major risks to them to achieving their objectives. Then we determine which ones of those are subject to audit, because there could be some that are policy-related issues on which we can't comment. Then we develop a plan for three to five years.
The selection of the departments and agencies that we will audit is largely dependent on the overall risk involved, and as well the...[Inaudible--Editor]. So for departments like the Department of National Defence, there will always be audits going on in there because of the scope and the size of it. Other departments, like the Department of Justice, we will maybe only audit once in 10 years. So we have a bit of a schedule of rotation as well based on how often we think we should be in certain departments. There is, of course, the work of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, which is part of the Office of the Auditor General, and there is usually a minimum of six to seven audits a year that have more of an environmental focus.
So we try to map it all out. We have a planning session every year where we put up the proposed audits, and then we try to see if there are themes, for example, that are coming out of that. We'll go back to the focus areas and look at that. Then we do our planning for the next.... We usually have a plan for about three years out. It takes us anywhere from 12 to 18 months to do an audit. So the audits that we will be reporting, say, next November will be starting shortly. So it's a long process.