Audit must help accomplish missions not be fault finder: Kalam

New Delhi, Oct 19 (UNI) President A P J Kalam today advised the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) of India to ensure that audit becomes an enabler for accomplishing missions by meeting their objectives, rather than ex-post-facto fault finder.

"No doubt that the systems should be such that it rewards high performance and weeds out unethical elements," Dr Kalam said in his addresss at the laying of foundation stone ceremony for the new building of CAG.

The President said the knowledge of auditors for a given task needs to be enhanced as the projects of 21st century will have multi-disciplinary inputs.

"The audit function is closely linked to the actions of the Government to meet the needs of of the citizens. Hence, the judgement of performance cannot be just in finance, but the composite factor of performance, cost, schedule and codes of conduct," he said.

Dr Kalam said "an effective audit function, with a continuous pro-active and forecasting outlook, for successful completion of the project, within the established code of conduct" was the need of the hour.

Dr Kalam said the process of audit has to become online, and for this he advised installing e-goverance systems for project management and monitoring at the commencement of the project itself.

"The CAG new building has to be designed to meet the tasks of e-audit", Dr Kalam added.

UNI GS PV HT1822