The Commonwealth Parliament regulates Australian Government entities through the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act  — the PGPA Act. The Act establishes a system of governance, performance and accountability for resources managed by entities. This edition of audit insights looks at recent ANAO audit activity reviewing entities implementation of key components of the PGPA: risk management, corporate planning and performance statements.

In late 1996, the Government announced its commitment to establish new facilities for the National Museum of Australia and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies on Acton Peninsula in Canberra. The objectives of the audit were to examine the project's compliance with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines for the procurement of public works and effectiveness of the project's management.

The objective of the audit was to assess the effectiveness of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s administration of the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy. The ANAO examined whether the department had established effective:

• administrative and governance arrangements to support NAQS;
• processes for identifying biosecurity risks and conducting scientific activities to address identified risks;
• arrangements for managing the quarantine aspects of Torres Strait border movements; and
• public awareness activities that reflect identified biosecurity risks and support the program’s objectives.

The aim of Insights: Audit Lessons is to communicate lessons from our audit work and to make it easier for people working within the Australian public sector to apply those lessons.

This edition of Insights: Audit Lessons is targeted at risk practitioners and officials responsible for government operations, projects, programs, services and regulatory activities. It would also be useful for accountable authorities, their senior executives and audit and risk committees.

In April 2002, the ANAO tabled Audit Report No.40 2001-02 Corporate Governance in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ( the 2002 audit). In August 2003, the ABC submitted a report to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit (JCPAA) on its progress in implementing the recommendations from the 2002 audit and the JCPAA report. This follow-up audit examined the ABC's implementation of recommendations from both reports, using the ABC's progress report as its base.

The objective of this audit was to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority’s administration of parliamentary expenses.

The aim of Audit Lessons is to communicate lessons from our audit work and to make it easier for people working within the Australian public sector to apply those lessons.

This edition is targeted at security, information communications technology (ICT) and human resources officials responsible for managing ICT system access and the offboarding process for employees and contractors separating from an entity.

This benchmarking study was a follow on from ANAO Report No. 14 of 2000-01, Benchmarking the Internal Audit Function, which was published in October 2000. The objective of the study was to obtain and report qualitative and quantitative data on aspects of the internal audit function and compare the public sector internal audit results with equivalent international data to identify better practices and highlight areas for improvement.