Australian National Audit Office

Posted: 18.02.09  |  Created by: Do Something

At a glance

• the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) provides auditing services to the Parliament and Commonwealth public sector entities
• until 2008 the ANAO completed its audits by collecting paper documents from agencies
• the ANAO creates around 6000 new files per year. The 55,000 paper files the ANAO currently holds contain between 7 and 220 kilograms of paper
• gathering, filing, handling, transporting and storing large amounts of paper is time consuming, very costly and not a productive use of staff time
• the ANAO introduced a Commonwealth compliant Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS) in 2008 so it can gather and store documents and records electronically
• the current productivity benefit gained by an electronic ANAO office is estimated to be in the order of $1.3m per year.

Company profile

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) provides auditing services to the Parliament and Commonwealth public sector entities. It supports the Auditor-General, who is an independent officer of the Parliament.

The ANAO’s primary client is the Australian Parliament. It provides the Parliament with an independent assessment of selected areas of public administration, and assurance about public sector financial reporting, administration, and accountability, primarily by conducting performance and financial statement audits.

Its audit clients include some 300 government bodies. Two new assurance activities have recently been requested: Government information and advertising campaigns and the status of progress with major Defence equipment acquisitions.

The challenge

The Audit Office until 2008 completed its audits by collecting paper documents from agencies and using these as evidence to produce its audit findings. The audit office creates around 6000 new files per year. The 55,000 paper files the ANAO currently holds contain between 7 and 220 kilograms of paper. These files have to be kept for 10 years for National Archives requirements.

The gathering, filing, handling, transporting and storing of large amounts of paper is time consuming, very costly and not a productive use of staff time.  The ability to have a productive knowledge and information sharing process with a paper file is limited to staff with direct access to the paper file.

The ANAO spends $70,000 on its own paper (100% recycled) usage and uses others Agencies’ paper stocks as it photocopies their paper files or prints their documents for audit purposes.  The annual ANAO external file storage cost amounts to $120,000 per year.

'Paper-Less' strategy

The ANAO introduced a Commonwealth compliant Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS) in 2008 so it can gather and store documents and records electronically.

'Paper-Less' solution

Staff have progressively moved to the EDRMS as each audit commences. Audit staff are now scanning paper files and gathering electronic documents from agencies and placing them as records in the ANAO EDRMS. 

• audit staff no longer have to transport large suitcases of paper around during their audits
• documents can be shared easily between and across audit team members when the staff are on or offsite
• staff can take the set of audit files electronically when the travel
• the capacity to comprehensively search the EDRMS stored documents has provided positive assurances on the audit findings
• information and knowledge sharing has improved and there is easier access to previous best practice examples of audit planning and work.
  

'Paper-Less' results

Paper will never be entirely eliminated from the ANAO due to staff preferences, legislative and security requirements but the goal is to reduce and recycle as much as possible.

• the current productivity benefit gained by an electronic ANAO office is in estimated to be in the order of $1.3m per year
• the ANAO will reduce external file storage costs by 15% pa over the next 6 years
• the number of records management staff has been able to be reduced 
• moving forward the ANAO has polices in place to do as much as possible electronically and dedicated onsite and remote scanning solutions are available
• the reduced paper use, manual handling and storage costs will provide additional savings to the ANAO. These savings can be used to increase the number, breadth or depth of audits and provide value and assurance to the parliament.
  

The ANAO has embraced green policies across all areas of its business and has won an ACT Green Award for it achievements so far.

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