The Auditor General reports for the national government and counties for FY2014/2015 are out giving reporters an opportunity to follow key leads to develop exclusive stories.
Reporters can easily access the audit reports which point to glaring misuse of public funds and at times diversion of funds to non core areas. The reports are already online and can be downloaded from the auditor General’s website direct link: http://www.kenao.go.ke
Reports submitted late
The reports have come in 17 months after the close of the 2014/2015 financial year. The Auditor General is expected by law to audit and report within six months after the financial year about the accounts of public entities, among others the accounts of the county governments and assemblies as well as all other funds and authorities under the county governments.
Single report combining Executive and County Assemblies
This year, the Auditor General has produced a single report that covers both the County Assembly and the Executive for each County unlike in 2013/2014 when separate reports for the assemblies and executives were produced.
Reports to be submitted to County Assemblies
The county audit reports shall be submitted to the county assemblies. Reporters can be able to follow up on when the reports will be tabled and how long it will take the public accounts committees to process the same and come up with recommendations.
The audit reports contain very many exclusive stories that can be followed up by individual journalists by interrogating a wide range of issues in a view to ensure good governance and prudent use of public funds.
The published Audit Reports are quite short which makes them easy to digest.
Please read our page: “How to interpret Auditor General reports.”
Timeliness of processing the reports
The reports have a timeline within which they are supposed to be processed. timeline-for-auditor-general-reports-in-counties-kenya
For more information on auditor general reports read our page on roggkenya: https://jhkea.org/agencies-stakeholders/auditor-general/
This year county based reporters are enabled to go to the first hand source at the same time as the national media because the reports went online at the time of publishing. There is no journalists for them to pick the stories indirectly from The Nation, the Standard or The Star. So the race is on for the best and fastest stories.
The new Public Audit Act requires the Auditor General to publich the reports online within two weeks after submitting them. (see our respective Access to Information page)
Note: The reports
