MOOC: Introduction to environmental auditing in the public sector

4.3. Publishing an audit report and communicating audit results

Communication of audit results

It is good practice to present the audit report to the relevant parliamentary committee for consideration, to the auditees for their information and to the media for introducing it to the general public.

Example of communication approach

NAO UK communication approach:

Our plans for climate & environment work include an analysis of key stakeholders and how we will engage them. This will include our standard approaches (press release, media interviews, NAO blog, Twitter, engaging directly with stakeholder groups such as academia and civil society, etc.) decided on a case-by-case basis.

State Audit Institutions usually issue press releases and post full audit reports on their websites. A good press release related to the environmental topic should draw attention to which environmental problem the audit helps solve and why it is important.

Social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, are used to present the results of the audits.

Examples of press releases:

NAO United Kingdom (4 December 2020) Achieving net zero

Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the UK is a colossal challenge and the government will need to spearhead a concerted national effort if it is to reach its goal by 2050, according to today’s report from the National Audit Office (NAO). /—/

NAO United Kingdom (27 November 2020) Managing flood risk

Today’s report by the National Audit Office (NAO) finds that the government is on track to achieve its target for better protecting 300,000 more homes from flooding by March 2021 but does not have a comprehensive measure of its progress in reducing the overall level of flood risk across England. /—/

NAO Estonia, TALLINN, 25 January 2018
Improvement of the condition of bodies of groundwater with a bad status depends mostly on conversions in agriculture and the oil shale industry /—/

SAI Sweden, 22 April 2020

Ineffective support for green cars

Despite the lack of adequate cost-benefit analysis and environmental impact assessments, the government has invested several billion kronor to increase the share of green cars. The Swedish National Audit Office audit shows that this has been relatively costly and ineffective in reducing the CO2 emissions of the transport sector. /—/

Publishing an audit report is an important stage, as it initiates public discussion on the issues uncovered. Some issues are of high interest to the public and broad-ranging discussions may enhance improvements in the area audited.

It is advisable to plan communication in advance and to be ready to respond to enquiries from the media without significant delay.

Example of communicating audit results

NAO New Zealand prepares a communication and impact plan for each audit. There is a template for that. Have a look INTOSAI WGEA Research Project on Improving the visibility of SAI’s work: Communicating environmental audit results (2019), p. 41.

As for social media, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram are used.

Visualization

It is important to make audit reports attractive to read. One option for this is to use visual elements because “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Please note:

Different ‘products’ can be used to present the audit results depending on the audience or the mode of presenting information, e.g. 1–2 pages with visual elements, interactive infographics on the website, tweets, videos or short summaries and articles on social media.