Advancing sectoral strategies

When exploring participatory strategies, it is important to distinguish who the right partner is—that is, those persons or groups who may be interested in SAI work and are willing to commit to engagement strategies to back audit performance.

For example, the conclusion of a report on elementary education may be of interest to the educational community, to parents´ associations, and to CSOs advocating for children´s egalitarian access to education, among others.

Who is the right partner?

• Someone who has been working on the agenda and has built knowledge in the field.
• Someone who can provide valuable input to SAI work, while also benefiting from it
• Someone who can cooperate on joint initiatives in the long term
• Someone who is deeply committed to improving government interventions and can therefore back SAI strategies

Identifying key actors

• SAIs should communicate in a manner that increases stakeholders’ knowledge and understanding of the role and responsibilities of the SAI as an independent auditor of the public sector.
• SAIs’ communication should contribute to stakeholders’ awareness of the need for transparency and accountability in the public sector.
• SAIs should communicate with stakeholders to ensure understanding of the SAI’s audit work and results.
• SAIs should interact appropriately with the media in order to facilitate communication with the citizens.
• SAIs should engage with stakeholders, recognizing their different roles, and consider their views, without compromising SAI’s independence.
• SAIs should periodically assess whether stakeholders believe the SAI is communicating effectively.

Showing the value of SAI work

Building commitment requires adequate strategies primarily to draw interest to SAI work. Several products may be appealing to different actors, so it is important to identify who may be interested in each. Once the audience is targeted, it is crucial to explore different strategies on how to display SAI products. That will help the SAI build a reputation and also encourage other actors to take part in audit work to enhance effectiveness.

What makes audit reports valuable to the audience? How can other stakeholders take profit from the information that audit reports contain? Those key questions must be answered when developing engagement strategies.

Aligning agendas

Getting buy-in from the audience implies showing the value of SAI work and, most importantly, showing how it can enrich and maximize CSOs´ agendas. With the audience on board, SAIs and CSOs will be able to coordinate strategies more easily to increase the effectiveness of oversight

Displaying receptiveness

Advancing engagement between SAIs and citizens entails building commitment. Civil society will participate provided they can count on an effective response to their queries and demands. Therefore, when developing participatory mechanisms, it is critical that SAIs adequately plan strategies for mainstreaming citizens´ demands and offering feedback and an effective response to citizens´ input.

Expressing the will to build sustainable bonds

One of the challenges that most SAIs encounter when advancing citizen engagement mechanisms is related to sustainability: How can the partners move from occasional contact toward a collaborative relationship of mutual benefit? Setting up participatory practices may be quite difficult at first, but sooner or later, initial obstacles can be resolved. Once that happens, and even when designing those strategies, thinking about the long term and visualizing incremental relationships is crucial. Ensuring regular and effective communication must be among SAIs’ top priorities. Keeping in contact with participants beyond special instances of cooperation can bring about several benefits:

“Pre-existing relations facilitate implementation, help build trust between the actors involved, and contribute to cooperation” (OECD 2013).