Auditor General Yli-Viikari presented promotion of sustainability by Finland at the United Nations

National audit offices in the INTOSAI member states have created a shared frame of reference that is used to assess the readiness of the governments to perform the actions needed to reach the goals, monitor them and provide reports on them. The national audit offices and the UN discussed assessment and auditing of the sustainable development Term Term bank goals at the UN/INTOSAI Symposium in Vienna on 1 June. Tytti Yli-Viikari, the Auditor General of the National Audit Office of Finland, presented the Finnish practices in the hearing of stakeholders, the utilisation of national indicators and preparatory work across sectors. Issues raised during the panel discussion included challenges inherent to the work on the indicators, as the objectives cover entire administration and society.

The global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that covers all member states was approved by the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015. The shared agenda sets common goals for the next 15 years for all UN member states.

INTOSAI as an organisation and each member state and national audit office separately have the opportunity to promote the reaching of the Agenda 2030 goals. INTOSAI is an important resource in the setting, monitoring and assessing of the goals nationally, regionally and also globally. Due to the vast scope of the sustainable development goals, most of them are related to the operations of the national audit offices in terms of financial, compliance and performance audits. The national audit offices have an important role in the achievement of the goals: they support their respective member states in the achievement of the goals and report the progress in connection with their audits.

In Finland, the operations are based on a national action plan prepared by the Commission for Sustainable Development, led by Prime Minister Sipilä. The action plan was the first report submitted to the parliament of Finland this year, which is the 100^th anniversary year of Finland. The National Audit Office of Finland systematically studies sustainable development issues in its performance audits. Decisions on the audit subjects are made annually in the audit plan, and the decisions are based on a risk analysis. The subjects of some of the audits are cross-administrative and -sectoral.

Report of the Finnish Government on the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development