CAG to explore new audit areas as it adopts end-to-end digital framework

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Comptroller and Auditor General of India will be exploring new audit areas, like extraction industries underwater and releasing more reports as the apex government auditor adopts end-to-end digital framework from this fiscal year.

In a media interaction post the three-day SAI20 Summit under the Indian Presidency of the G20 here, CAG Girish Chandra Murmu also stressed the need for data standardisation to make audits easier and faster.

The CAG, he said had held a seminar with respective departments and ministries in this regard.

They have agreed to certain level of data standardisation We surpassed the ten years record last year. It (audit reports) will further increase. Data processing and report preparation will be faster, he said and added the CAG will adopt end-to-end digitalisation to prepare audit reports.

The CAG audit reports are placed before Parliament and state legislative assemblies. The apex auditor would be exploring new audit areas, like shipping and extraction industries underwater, Murmu said.

The CAG has started end-to-end digital audits from this year onwards. The move will help improve the accuracy of audits and expedite the process. Murmu also said the use of technology like drones and satellites has already become an integral part of the auditing process, which lends it more accuracy.

The summit focused on two priority areas Blue Economy and Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI). Murmu in his valedictory address at the summit, highlighted that collectively, SAIs have chartered a path to heighten efficiency, accountability and transparency in the optimized maturing of the new-age areas of the Blue Economy and Artificial Intelligence.

As many as 85 National and International delegates from G20 member SAIs, Guest SAIs, Invited SAIs, International Organizations and other Engagement Groups attended the event.

Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) of G20 nations on Wednesday pledged to cooperate and collaborate to deal with the challenges of auditing frontier spheres of blue economy and artificial intelligence.

The communique, issued at the end of the Supreme Audit Institutions-20 (SAI20) Engagement Group, set up under India's G20 Presidency, also underlined the need for optimal governance in the use of AIs to ensure transparency and accountability under the existing legal and regulatory framework.