Auditor General’s review: Achieving savings and improving the efficiency of public administration is our shared responsibility
At the National Audit Office, our job is to audit and review the activities of others. The main focus of this annual report, too, is on presenting the findings of our audit inspections. It is a good idea for not only organisations but also individuals to occasionally look at how they are succeeding in their work. Openness also makes it possible to assess the NAOF’s accountability.
The basic premise of the NAOF’s strategy for 2024–2030 is that we concentrate on performing our basic tasks, which consist of audits and oversight, efficiently and with a high impact.
Half-way through the strategy period we launched a mid-term review, in which we examine how well we have executed the strategy so far and determine if changes in the operating environment will make it necessary to tweak its implementation in the next few years. Stakeholders find that focusing on the NAOF’s basic tasks has proven a good decision, whereas scope for improvement still remains in efficient use of technology.
Audits and oversight reinforce the public administration’s accountability to Parliament and the citizens. To this end, we aim to produce relevant information on central government finances and fiscal management. This information helps to verify the legality of fiscal management, improve the efficiency of public administration and achieve savings.
Some of the NAOF’s work is widely visible to citizens through the media. Our performance and fiscal policy audits and also many oversight findings indeed often attract a great deal of attention. People are interested in the issues they address, and bringing up the audit perspective on them in publicity is invaluable.
Following its audits, the NAOF issues recommendations to improve the efficiency or appropriateness of what the public administration does. Whereas these recommendations are not legally binding to the public administration, we regularly monitor their implementation a few years after the audit. On this basis, we know that the public administration implements the recommendations rather well, some of them fully and others only in part. This time our annual report focuses more attention than usual on interesting follow-up observations.
At the end of 2025, a legislative amendment put an end to our independent fiscal policy oversight, which had been included in the National Audit Office’s duties for over a decade. We now focus on securing the preconditions for responsible fiscal decision-making by auditing the drafting and knowledge base of fiscal policy and the effectiveness of its steering framework.
Citizens can rely on the legality of fiscal management
While the NAOF’s financial audits cover central government finances in full, they only appear in the spotlight of publicity occasionally. In public administration, too, it is rare for anyone other than those in the know to be interested in financial audits. It is easier to make headlines about the planning of government spending, in other words the budget, than about how the money was ultimately spent.
However, in this context I would like to highlight the importance of the NAOF’s financial audit work. As they concern compliance issues, the recommendations given following financial audits are often mandatory. In this annual report we note that few errors are found in the state’s fiscal management and that the number of such errors has continued to decrease. Based on these observations, we may and should conclude that the central government operates well and responsibly in this respect.
The NAOF and the public administration organisations we audit share the goal of correcting any errors as quickly as possible, which contributes to reducing their number. Consequently, a significant part of the corrections prompted by financial audits are already made as a natural part of the financial audit process before the financial year ends. We prefer getting things right to pointing a finger at errors and those who make them at a later date. We believe that correcting errors rapidly is important for the citizens and Parliament alike. However, the work on corrections during financial audits goes no further than interim reports and does not generate news headlines, even if these reports are not secret.
Auditing reflects the exceptional global situation
The NAOF’s financial audits cover all central government accounting offices and consequently produce a consolidated and continuously updating picture of how central government funds are used. Long-term monitoring data indicate that the state of finances has remained relatively stable. In the last few of years, the number of errors not corrected before the financial audit reports come out has decreased.
The annual report discusses preparedness for various threats and exceptional situations. Keeping questions of economic efficiency on the agenda is often difficult when looking at threats, despite the essential role of these issues regarding our ability for preparedness.
In addition to audits, we carry out the important tasks of overseeing political party and election campaign funding, the Finnish Transparency Register and, from the beginning of the year, also political advertising. We inform Parliament of our oversight observations by issuing separate reports. One chapter of the annual report focuses on the handling of complaints submitted to the NAOF and the processing, content and number of reports of abuses. Complaints and reports of abuses provide the NAOF with information about suspected misuse of state funds. It is worrisome that the authorities’ approaches to reporting financial irregularities they have detected still varies, even if reporting such abuses is their legal obligation.
The annual report discusses also the NAOF’s goals and the way we have used our appropriations to achieve them. We also report on contacts with stakeholders relevant to the NAOF’s tasks. By presenting this information we also facilitate assessments of our work. We assess our success based on goal achievement and the volume of outputs. The year under review has been successful in this respect, the thanks for which go to the NAOF’s focused and skilled personnel.
I would also like to thank all entities we audit and oversee for their positive interaction with us. Regardless of our roles, we all share the same goal: a reliable and efficient state administration.
