To add to what Deb said, we've recently been implementing some software that allows our audit teams to interrogate our past audit reports and to draw out criteria, for instance, that may have been used in the past. As well, where we've articulated something around a subject matter like risk management or governance, they can quickly search the material to access it in order to improve the efficiency of their current audit.
In a similar vein—we touched earlier on tables and the presentation of statistical information—we have some other software that helps us enormously. We're working with our bureau of statistics to present information in a much better way. We are trying in our audit analysis to use more software to help us analyze the population data that we're looking at. As a result of that, we're able to draw information out. There's a real art form in how to best present information in a statistical sense.
Again, we're working on a software solution to allow our teams to put into our reports some diagrams, graphs, pie charts, and that sort of thing to try to assist in the communication of the messages in our reports. It's very much a journey, this focus on audit quality and communication.
I was talking to the U.S. GAO, and I was asking them, particularly recently, about communication, because I'm conscious of the way in which we auditors present reports. Sometimes it lacks the clarity that some members of Parliament would like to see. It was interesting; they said that they're introducing communications specialists into their audit teams--from the very early planning stages right through to the end of the process--to make sure that the audit team continues to focus on the clarity of the findings, and the conclusions, and the messaging as a result of their work.
I find it here sometimes, with my own staff. Not surprisingly, they get very close to the detail of their work, and often I'll say, “Well, you just need to stand back. What's the key message here? What's the primary message you want to get across?”
So we're working hard, like the OAG, just to improve the quality of our work and to pick up best practice from anywhere in the world we can get it. The reality is that we tend to pick it up from the leading countries, of which OAG is one, but we're all ears when it comes to improving our own performance.