Sri Lanka’s Deputy Auditor General for Performance Audit Completes Fellowship in Washington with USAID Support
Excerpts from an interview Stéphane Laroche, USAID Sri Lanka and Maldives Controller, had with Ms. T.G. I. Padmini, Deputy Auditor General for Performance Audit at the National Audit Office of Sri Lanka, on her fellowship, supported by USAID, to Washington DC recently.
When Sri Lanka’s National Audit Office (NAOSL) training division sought applications for the 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO)* Fellowship in Washington DC, Padmini applied. The reason: she recalled one of her NAOSL colleagues effusively praising his fellowship experience way back in 2006. Little did she realize 18 years later she would be selected to go through a similar experience with 15 other Fellows from across the world.
As Sri Lanka recovers from the 2022 economic crisis and works to improve its public financial management (PFM) practices, this fellowship was considered a promising opportunity to strengthen PFM and public sector efficiency as well as increase accountability in Sri Lanka.
Following selection, she drafted her fellowship strategy paper, a requirement of the fellowship program. Passionate about performance audits, she centered her paper on improving NAOSL’s Performance Audit Division. She was paired with a GAO Fellowship mentor, who coached her to refine her strategy and work on a procedure to follow-up on the implementation of recommendations - a very important part of performance auditing. Her paper was titled, “Enhancing Follow-Up on the Implementation of Recommendations from Performance Reports.”
The Sri Lankan Parliament sub committees such as the Committees on Public Enterprises and Public Account direct audit institutions to implement NAOSL report recommendations. Therefore, the NAOSL needs to strengthen its system to track, follow-up, or close these audit recommendations. Padmini’s goal was to tackle this. Throughout her fellowship, she focused on acquiring tools to sharpen her performance audit knowledge and learn from the GAO systems that could work in Sri Lanka. More importantly, the program provided her with change management strategies to help her succeed in implementing her strategy at the NAOSL.
On her return upon completion of the fellowship, the NAOSL Auditor General approved Padmini’s implementation plan and provided her with the facilities needed to implement it. In the immediate future, Padmini will work with NAOSL’s Performance Audit Division to minimize the number of pages of Performance audit reports and present them in a comprehensive manner, making them more accessible for public consumption. Within a year, she anticipates exploring with her colleagues audit recommendation follow up systems that would work in Sri Lanka.
Padmini’s appreciation for the fellowship extends beyond the performance audit tools she acquired. She greatly appreciated the Comptroller General and GAO staff including mentors and sponsors who introduced the fellows to various sites in Washington DC, offering them a unique understanding of American history and culture. She is also very excited about the network of 16 fellows that she is now a part of. As she implements her strategy, she will not only have GAO to reach out to for support but also other Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) staff that she has made connections with during her fellowship.
Lastly, Padmini partnered with the Sri Lanka High Commission in Washington DC to showcase Sri Lanka’s beauty to her fellow GAO auditors and 15 other SAIs at a cultural day celebration. She could not be happier.
Padmini’s GAO Fellowship participation was made possible through USAID’s Partnership for Accelerating Results in Trade, National Expenditure and Revenue (PARTNER) project. PARTNER works to minimize bottlenecks to trade, bolster foreign direct investment, and strengthen the capacity of small and medium enterprises, private sector associations, and chambers of commerce to promote a vibrant private sector in Sri Lanka.
*GAO is the United States Supreme Audit Institution
