Challenge

The Flemish Audit Authority is responsible for auditing (financially and operationally) the projects subsidized through European structural funds and Flemish co-financing. In these audits, the following things stand out:

The audits occur two years after the effective expenditure, which usually does not allow to recover a part of the rejected costs. By monitoring/auditing earlier, faster and continuously, it is possible to react more quickly, which means that in some cases the subsidies linked to these rejected expenses can still be recovered;

An operational/financial audit includes partly an editorial component, partly an executive and partly an interpretive component. For the first two components there is a certain recurrent system, with little added value. Only for the third component is there a cognitive component. The whole thing therefore has a certain "tick-off" content which is risky on the one hand, and not very cost-effective on the other;

All audit work has to be done between +/- April and November (including two months of leave during which the audit work has to be done at a strongly reduced regime), which means that not all audits can be done with the available auditors. A significant proportion of audits must therefore be outsourced. This outsourcing is done at a relatively high cost, for not always the same added value;

When outsourcing, it is often noted that the performers of these assignments are often young auditors with little or no knowledge of public procurement and state aid, making the quality control by the Flemish Audit Authority very intensive and time-consuming, which is not the intention of outsourcing.

This project wants to rethink the audit process methodologically and technologically, with the following objectives: greater certainty, at lower cost, within a shorter period of time with greater added value and less loss of (European) resources.