No obligation to include ministry’s ‘verbose’ comments in audit reports
Auditor General (AG), Sonia Webster, has suggested that her office is under no obligation to include feedback from relevant government ministries or departments when issuing her audit reports.
The AG gave that indication when she appeared before the Commission of Inquiry (COI) last week.
At the time, Webster was responding to criticisms by Premier Andrew Fahie about her reports being void of any kind of responses from the government.
“While we do invite comments back, there is no obligation to add the comments to our reports, and there is a reason why we don’t do it,” Webster told the COI.
“In the past, we would incorporate some of the comments [such as] ‘the Permanent Secretary said X, Y, and Z’. In the past, we did that. What we’ve been getting back is these long comments that were verbose that are only marginally relevant to the report,” she explained.
Webster was firm in insisting that there should be no expectation for what she deemed ‘irrelevant’ responses to be included in her report.
“If I issue a report that’s 30 pages long and get back a response that’s 70 pages long, and most of that isn’t relevant to what’s in the report and there is an expectation I would take that and add this to my report. That’s not going to happen,” Webster stated.
No evidence to support feedback
Webster further told the Commission that her office goes through a lot of meticulous processes to vet and to ensure that reports are relevant, concise and factual.
But she contended that the Audit Office sometimes gets comments that make statements suggesting different versions of events, but this often comes without evidence.
“If you can send me your comments and send me the evidence or point me to the evidence, that we can go and look at that and verify that is the case, then we are in a position where we can make an amendment to the report,” Webster stated.
According to the Auditor General: ”If I say that our records indicate or the records from the Ministry indicate that the file was blue and you come back and say, ‘No, in fact, it wasn’t blue, it was red,’ and there is no evidence that it was red, I am not going to change it in the report. I need some sort of evidence that I can go back to and verify. If I say there were a hundred farmers and you said, ‘No, in fact, there were a thousand“, I need evidence to show that that was the case.”
Former Education Minister Myron Walwyn was also among those who criticised one of the AG’s reports as being incomplete because it reportedly lacked any consideration of his Ministry’s response at the time in relation to an audit done on the Elmore Stoutt High School (ESHS) wall.
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It is clear that this lady was rushing down this report to catch the coi. Is possible she got the heads up from jasper even before the coi was announce. That aint good governance. That is compromising your office.
Foolish people sabotaging their own country to kiss up to massa.
Do you have any proof of what you are saying? BTW, “this lady” has a name.
SHE EXPOSED AYO
The massa, and those benefitting from exposing the graft, corr., theft, obstructions: the 90% of all we who not: getting paid for gov job, elected gov, and not friends and family spoiled with inside gifts. THE MASSA IS THE 27000 ppl here paying into system and getting nothing but thief and third world home to show for it. A MARCH ON THE GOV IS COMING.
And again, as she says where is the proof or evidence to back up what you have written.
What’s clear is that you must be one of the people benefiting from the corruption/ willful incompetence. If they can rush to give away public funds so much so that farms that don’t even exist can get still get government grant. Why not investigate what really happen?… where this word “rush” even come from? she investigated something that done happen already!… When should she have investigated it? after the COI? sturpss
It is common practice for Ministries and some departments not to give auditors what they ask for. This particular exercise was no different. Shame on man you notary public who are signing off in documents after the fact and this is why this territory will never improve.
It is common practice for Ministries and some departments not to give auditors what they ask for. This particular exercise was no different. Shame on you notary publics who are signing off on documents after the fact and this is why this territory will never improve.
I love this lady’s stance…Don’t let fahie baffle you with no bull$#!+
Both she and the Internal Auditor.
So what she’s omitting to say is that while ALL the other audit reports went before the process of being presented to the house of assembly and the ministers to which they may respond to, this ONE which she didn’t politically agree with was rushed to feed England and now she having a big government position suddenly has no manners for the ELECTED representatives and by extension the people of the VI
She exposed the duttiness alyo been doing for too long now
Something not adding up here .. the only person who got exposed wa sthe Auditor General ../In 2021 the British can still find House slaves to under mine the process and turn the revolution upside down…
This canr be a 2021 BVI ..somthin fishy ..Question were you like this with NDP. rushuing reports to the massa
This woman seems to have motives
No. This woman has morals & scruples.
As an accountant and auditor myself her position is thevproper one to average
The AG did what is good and right! Do people realize there is a possibility that a report can deliberately be withheld when it requires comments, just because someone doesn’t like what the report says. What happens if the AG was a walk over? One thing I can tell you – we wouldn’t have known what we know now!
Who gave her the authority to leave out pertinent information that the Ministry provided to her and which was deemed necessary to be incorporated in the report? She is just trying to bring down the same country that is feeding her. Does she have her own agenda and that is to discredit the VIP Government? If Ralph was alive and in charge, she would have already been fired.
From what it seems like the ministry responded and still did not include no actual evidence supporting anything said in their response. Any information with no evidence shouldn’t be included in the report its just their opinion really.
The government has responded to the report through interviews with the COI. All we have seen are excuses rather than action. Has there been anything worthy of mention that demonstrates the government has taken steps to address the audit findings that isn’t in the ‘embryonic’ stage…instead they would rather write verbose responses. If they could better use their time to address the issues instead of writing long winded responses adding up to nothing….shame really.
Because u know what DEEMED means and cam use it in a sentence …. Doesn’t mean you understand what she was saying . Information unsupported by evidence is not relevant. Anyone cam say anything . Records don’t lie
LMAO!!! Do you even understand what an Auditor is and what they do? Do you even remotely grasp the concept? The Auditor General does not report to Government, she holds a post that requires them to be accoutable for monies spent! Even if you hire any Auditor worth their salt to audit your own private company, you CANNOT tell them what to put in their report! The level of ignorance in the BVI is showing with this process, it’s obvious many of these politicians pass laws in the HOA but have no f**king idea what they are supposed to be doing.
FFS, shut the hell up….IF….IF….IF….Every Government Party from donkeys years ago up to now had done right and been good stewards of the people.. There would be NO COI!
One thing I’m glad for, she is a LOCAL.!!
so you can use all kinds of names to spew out whats inside your d**ty mind in your comments ( the COI ) will tame U
This a real Patriot… Not like CSC and them wha you gah beg them to don’t take what they know they not supposed to get… This lady don’t care who vex she gonna do her job properly… If you have alternate information bring evidence!… Thas all!.. How you gonna want to change the narrative of what the evidence shows without bringing more evidence proving what you saying?
All the talk and chatter our elected officials have you would think they read our laws and protocols. They have gotten so used to dumbing down the local populace which is why they fear and talk down the COI. The COI is a proper, formal process that puts them on the spot and requires them to show a level of common sense and knowledge of processes that they were never forced to and are obviously not well versed in. Their push back on the COI has nothing to do with UK racism or take over, it’s the issue of them looking like idiots to the populace who once believed they could save us. The locals are being referred to as Uncle Tom and self haters because they support the COI. The COI for most of us has nothing to do with UK or whites, it has to do with politicians finally being asked the hard questions and must answer them. When the locals stood up to any of them, they were stripped of their jobs and victimised. Let me see them victimise Gary and Bilal.
Their behaviour,lack of moral and sensibility,Vincent’s stance on the rapist for citizenship and Andrew and his Gov silence ..these factors and more are what will define the future of the VIP party and the future of the VI no matter the COINS findings and decision. When the COI is long gone the faces of these ministers daily in places,will be an indelible reminder of Revelation.
A fu@king solider. Thank God for her