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The aim of this paper is to compare the audit and accountability arrangements of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) internationally.

Building on a theorisation of regulatory space, extended by new audit spaces of public audit, the scope of the research is the 196 SAIs that are full members of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The study is based on documentation review, workshops with a steering panel, a survey of all SAIs (response rate of 64%, being 125 of 196 members), workshops with the seven regions of INTOSAI and discussion at Congress.

The paper suggests that the audit and accountability arrangements for SAIs is underpinned by INTOSAI's global voice, a country's regulatory space and a SAIs organization, capacity and scope that are themes used to structure the comparison. The results show there is diversity in the organization, capacities and scope of SAIs, but also an opportunity for recognising the positive potential of INTOSAI in fulfilling its global voice leveraged from the results of its work with its regions and members.

This is the most comprehensive research study of SAIs and the research underpinning this study enables SAIs to compare themselves regionally and internationally.

New public management (NPM) has transformed the public sector auditing context, although in quite different ways. Further, investigations into NPM’s impact on public sector auditors and audit institutions have been largely unconnected, with the exception of the critical examination of performance audits. We investigate the question of how public sector auditors’ roles and activities have changed as a result of NPM and later reforms.

We examine and synthesise public sector audit research examining reforms since the year 2000. The research presented considers changes to external and internal public sector audits as well as the development of public sector audit institutions – known as supreme audit institutions (SAIs).

Considerable changes have occurred. Many were influenced by NPM, but others have evolved from the eco-system of accounting, auditing and public sector management. External auditors have responded to an increase in demand for accountability. Additional management and governance techniques have been introduced from the private sector, such as internal auditing and audit committees. NPM has also led to conflicting trends, particularly when governments introduced competition to public sector auditing by contracting out but then chose to centralise to improve accountability. There is also greater international influence now through bodies like the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) and similar regional bodies.

NPM reforms and the eco-system have impacted public sector auditing. Sustainability reporting is emerging as an area requiring more auditing attention; auditors also need to continue to develop better ways to communicate with citizens. Further, research into auditing in non-Western nations and emerging technologies is also required, especially where it provides learnings around more valuable audit practices. Empirical evidence is required of the strengths and weaknesses of SAIs’ structural variety.

To discuss the theoretical framework for involvement of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) in anti‐corruption struggle and their contributions in practice.

The paper presents a theoretical and practical discussion on both direct and indirect contributions of SAIs in fighting with corruption. To this end, it covers a comprehensive analysis of SAIs in terms of separation of power, audit evidence, transparency, investigative power and accountability. Hence, cornerstone documents concerning the subject matter of the paper have been scrutinized so as to evaluate the role of SAIs in detail.

Active participation of SAIs which have financial, organizational, operational and functional independence and audit mandate guaranteed by constitutions and laws is essential in order for deterring corruption by promoting accountability, openness and good governance public‐financial management. Furthermore, it is likely that SAIs detect some suspicious cases of corruption even though most of them have no power to investigate those cases.

The paper points out that SAIs to some extend may take part in the fight with corruption directly by detecting it beside its conventional role of deterring and preventing.

Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) examine and supervise the activity of public institutions. The study aims at contributing to the existing literature on public sector audit by providing a classification of 29 European SAIs – 28 national SAIs and the European Court of Auditors (ECA) – based on a broad range of attributes varying from the SAIs' environment to its structure, activity, resources or transparency.

The authors apply quantitative methodology for clustering by means of multidimensional scaling and regressive ordinary least square (OLS) and logistic models.

The authors' results show that SAIs from veteran EU member states (MSs) are more similar amongst them and the same applies to SAIs from Nordic countries, Baltic countries, Western Mediterranean countries and Eastern countries. The authors also perform additional analysis focussing on currently relevant issues such as gender equality, age, environment or the sustainable development goals (SDGs), concluding that the younger the institutions' staff, the more transparent the institutions are. The authors also find that more transparent SAIs report on environmental audits, more prone to cover the SDGs in their audits.

The research is limited in purpose and scope because data cover only Europe. Given the limited number of observations (29), it does not have prospective purposes but only explanatory ones. The authors' findings are interesting for researchers because they offer original insights on public audit in Europe and cover matters of current interest such as environment, transparency or gender equality.

The research is also of interest for public auditors because it offers them information that may help them improve their activity and find institutional synergies, as the dataset is available to public auditors.

From a social view point, the paper shows that public auditors perform work on topics of interest for the citizens.

The dataset compiled for the research offers extensive data and a wide variety of attributes defining European SAIs and may offer future opportunities for research from different perspectives.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to dialogue between practitioners and academics. The article discusses the importance of supreme audit institutions (SAIs), challenges and opportunities facing SAIs (also in light of COVID-19) and how the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) supports SAIs in developing countries in enhancing their performance and capacity.

This is a practitioner’s viewpoint which reflects IDI’s publicly available documents and the opinions of a practitioner involved in the work of the IDI and that of INTOSAI.

The work of SAIs is ensuring effective public sector auditing matters, and it is increasingly recognized that strong and well-functioning SAIs can be key pillars in developing effective states, democratic development and trust in governments. At the same time, SAIs face challenges and opportunities in ensuring that they are effective and independent institutions that produce reports that have impact and add value to the life of citizens. The IDI supports SAIs in overcoming these challenges and seizing opportunities through support for all SAIs in developing countries. The IDI model is based on facilitated support that is need based and provided through peer-to-peer cooperation.

The limitations of this article (which are also its strength in terms of fitness for purpose) are that as a practitioner’s viewpoint, it provides a brief overview and personal judgements rather than an empirical analysis of developments applying a theoretical framework.

A practitioner’s engagement with academic supports increased understanding of the respective views leading to better outcomes for practitioners and academics working in the area of public sector auditing.

The article provides a practitioner's input on the important work of SAIs.

Adopting interdisciplinary comparative perspective, this paper seeks to study the variety exhibited by the post‐socialist democratic regimes of Central Europe (CE) in the constitutional status of supreme audit institutions (SAI). More specifically, the focus of this work is the degree of independence that SAI enjoy vis‐à‐vis the branches of government, as it is embodied in the constitutional provisions of selected countries of the region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) address the issue of auditing ethical cases and, more specifically, to research whether the organizational structure of an SAI affects the variables of “corruption” and “trust in government.”

The authors categorized SAIs into two groups depending on their organizational structure according to two divergent philosophies: the court (French) and Anglo-Saxon models. These reflect the presidential and parliamentary systems, respectively. Given the lack of a common definition for these concepts, the authors tested their results using several indexes for corruption by examining OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Member countries between 2015 and 2019.

The authors’ research showed that SAIs organized according to the Anglo-Saxon philosophy achieved better scores than judicial SAIs for all indexes, and the difference was statistically significant. This result confirms the results of previous studies; however, one single common SAI model worldwide is not necessarily the optimal solution for fighting corruption.

The topic of this paper is a challenging and promising one for scholars and practitioners alike, as it combines a review of SAIs' community practices with academic research by expanding the scant literature in this field.

This paper aims to analyse how the supreme audit institution (SAI) monitors related party transactions (RPTs) in the Brazilian public sector. It considers definitions and disclosure policies of RPTs by international accounting and auditing standards and their evolution since 1980.

Based on archival research on international standards and using an interpretive approach, the authors investigated definitions and disclosure policies. Using a topic model based on latent Dirichlet allocation, the authors performed a content analysis on over 59,000 SAI decisions to assess how the SAI monitors RPTs.

The SAI investigates nepotism (a kind of RPT) and conflicts of interest up to eight times more frequently than related parties. Brazilian laws prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest, but not RPTs in general. Indeed, Brazilian public-sector accounting standards have not converged towards IPSAS 20, and ISSAI 1550 does not adjust auditing procedures to suit the public sector.

The SAI follows a legalistic auditing approach, indicating a need for regulation of related public-sector parties to improve surveillance. In addition to Brazil, other code law countries might face similar circumstances.

Public-sector RPTs are an under-investigated field, calling for attention by academics and standard-setters. Text mining and latent Dirichlet allocation, while mature techniques, are underexplored in accounting and auditing studies. Additionally, the Python script created to analyse the audit reports is available at Mendeley Data and may be used to perform similar analyses with minor adaptations.

This paper aims to explore the role of public sectors auditors in strategically responding to institutional pressures to conduct a performance audit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation in Ghana.

To gather in-depth and rich empirical data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 senior and middle management auditors of Ghana's Supreme Audit Institution (SAI).

The findings indicate that the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions, the government, auditees, political executives and the Audit Service Board all exert institutional pressure on Ghana's audit of SDG implementation. In response to these pressures, the SAI deploys acquiescence, compromise and manipulation strategies that result in the coupling, and in some cases, the loose coupling of SDG audit practices.

Observation method of data collection would have given the researchers first-hand knowledge of the role of auditors, the institutional pressures to SDG audit and the strategic response to the institutional pressures. The authors were unable to accompany the public sector auditors to their field audits. This would have aided in obtaining more detailed empirical data.

The findings suggest that external and internal factors affect public sector audit of SDG implementation. Because the SAI of Ghana is dependent on the central government for budgetary allocation and auditees for miscellaneous logistics, it is under coercive pressure to meet rent seeking demands of political executives. As a result, SAIs in emerging economies must revisit the other side of accountability by reinforcing a constructive dialogue with those held accountable, particularly politicians and auditees.

This study's contribution is the exploration and application of institutional theory and Oliver (1991) model for responding to institutional pressures to a novel research area, namely, SDG implementation audit by public sector auditors in an emerging economy.

To examine the enabling legislation of European Union (EU) member country supreme audit institutions (SAIs) for their accountability to parliament and independence from the executive arm of government.

The sample comprises the SAIs of the 25 EU member countries and the European Court of Auditors. Data were collected on 30 accountability and independence issues directly from the enabling legislation of these SAIs.

Results indicate that apart from a number of instances where the enabling legislation is silent, provisions generally provide for adequate independence of the SAIs from the executive arm of government. On the other hand, the provisions for the accountability of the SAIs to parliament are somewhat weaker.

If actual practice or convention does not reflect the literal interpretation and application of the enabling legislation, then SAIs may have more or less independence and/or accountability than suggested by the analysis of the legislation alone.

Results of this study highlight where current provisions could be further strengthened through appropriate amendments to the enabling legislation.

Such findings may be useful to policy makers and legislators.