Internal auditing is:
"…an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and governance processes."

Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing
Institute of Internal Auditors, Inc.

The principle business objectives of the CGIAR Internal Auditing Unit are:

Feature Article: Thinking about the use, adoption or influence of internal audit work

The CGIAR Internal Auditing Unit is one of several shared service units in the CGIAR System, and participates in a common annual Unit performance assessment process within the Center Alliance structure. Interestingly, one element of the assessment is for the common service units to reflect on, and present, the major outcomes of their activities.

This requires the Internal Audit community in the CGIAR System to consider this in relation to our own work. We are familiar, in the international internal auditing profession, with analyzing what we produce (our outputs) and other more intermediate effects of our work. But what could be the main outcomes and impact of the internal audit function?

This requires us to think more closely about the use, adoption or influence of internal audit work, no less than our audit clients must do so about their activities . One way to approach this in the internal audit context is to ask a number of key questions:

• Have the audits and advisory work of the Unit, and the Center IAs under its guidance, resulted in useful changes by Centers that improve their capacity to mitigate various risks?   This is tested with Center management in each audit assignment, and at six monthly or annual intervals when the Audit Committees of the Board of Trustees review the work and the Center's responsiveness to audit recommendations.  In that sense, the CGIAR Internal Audit Unit has to prove its worth on a continual basis to stay in business.   Internal Audit has, over recent years, undertaken work across a wide range of topics based on individual Center priorities, so far to the overall satisfaction of the Center clients.    The  adoption rates for recommendations rated as significant, which is one metric of utility, are increasingly being systematically monitored and reported to Audit Committees.  In general, implementation rates range from good to high depending on the Center, and where significant recommendations remain pending, their relevance is regularly reviewed and confirmed.  Feedback from Centers on, and examples of use of the IAU Good Practice Notes, indicates that this remains a valued product of the Unit.
  

• has the visibility of the Unit, and the Center IAs under its guidance, encouraged discipline and deterred misuse of Center resources even in those areas of operation not directly audited?  There appears to be wide agreement among Center clients that this is the case although it is impossible to test or determine its significance, and mismanagement and misuse/fraud certainly hasn’t been reduced to zero!  The IAU hypothesizes that the efforts, since the Unit’s establishment in 2000, to improve the professionalism of the internal audit function in the Centers has had a positive effect in this regard.   However there is an ongoing challenge for the Unit and the Center Internal Auditors who work with it to find ways, without requiring more resources, to detect, and foster action on, potential problems inside their client Centers as early as possible.  

• has the existence of the Unit, and its efforts to increase internal audit professionalism across the Centers, resulted in maintaining or improving donor confidence?   Again hard to test.  It is expected this would be the case, in a negative sense i.e. an absense of a well functioning internal audit service within the CGIAR System would be detrimental to donor confidence.   There are particular cases over the years where the existence of the IAU has enabled positive interactions at the donor auditor level that has hopefully contributed to a sense of ease on the donor side. 
  

As part of the continual improvement of the internal audit function in the CGIAR System, the CGIAR Internal Auditing Unit is promoting a conversation within the internal audit community and with its Center clients on how to better define and track the outcomes of investments in the function. This will be a topic at the next CGIAR Internal Audit Professional Development Week to be held in June 2009 in Mexico.