THIRD PARTY GOVERNMENT AUDITS

THIRD PARTY GOVERNMENT AUDITS My dear friends, according to Microsoft Copilot, “the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is responsible for conducting government audits. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. Often referred to as the "congressional watchdog," the GAO investigates federal spending and performance to ensure accountability and efficiency in government operations”. I believe that the GAO was created under the legal fiction that whoever appropriates the money, should audit the money. That is the reason why the GAO was created by the US Congress, and it remains within the legislative branch over there. For some reason, we did not copy that legal fiction here in the Philippines. That is perhaps the reason why over here, the Philippine Congress created the Commission on Audit (COA) as an independent commission that is outside both the legislative and the executive branches. The COA is so independent and so powerful, that it could even audit the Philippine Congress itself. I do not know about you, but in my opinion, I prefer the American legal fiction that the one who appropriates should be the one to audit. Of course, we are an independent country, and we do not have to copy everything that the Americans are doing, even if our system of government was patterned after theirs. Yes, we might have copied, but we copied differently. Although it has not done yet, the Philippine Congress also has the power to conduct hearings about anything that the COA is doing, and that could take the form of an audit. Sad to say, there is there is still a lot of corruption happening in the Philippine government, despite the supposedly strict audits that the COA is doing. Is it because the corrupt officials are so good at stealing the money, such that they can go around the COA? Or is it because the COA is not so good at what they are doing, such that the corrupt officials are finding it too easy to go around them? Since the stealing has been going on for many decades despite the many years of auditing, is it not about time that we try other approaches? How about allowing third party audits by private accounting firms in addition to the audits done by COA? Or how about creating an office inside the Philippine Congress that is like the GAO? If the Philippine Congress allows third party audits, we would have an additional means of detecting corrupt expenditures by way of comparing the two audit reports. And if the Philippine Congress conducts their own inhouse audits, it would become easier for them to conduct budget hearings. In theory, our Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) should be able to operate freely as if they are private corporations, so that they could generate the profits that they should. As a possible innovation, they could be allowed to engage the services of private accounting firms. Instead of policing them to find out what is being stolen, we should just check their bottom lines to find out if they are meeting their revenue targets or not. For sure, they could not achieve their revenue targets if someone inside is stealing the money. Your friend, IKE SENERES/11-28-24/visit my blog senseneres.blogspot.com