Sharjah 24: The Sharjah Finance Department (SFD), represented by its Internal Audit Office, launched an educational initiative for employees of government entities in the Emirate, with the aim of enhancing awareness of internal audit activity.
This also comes to introduce its importance and roles aimed at achieving distinguished financial leadership in these entities, and the basic steps for its management and the mechanism of its application, in a way that contributes to preserving public money, ensuring optimal investment towards achieving Sharjah's strategic goals.
In this context, the department organised at its headquarters the first workshop targeting a number of male and female employees of the internal audit offices and departments of the Sharjah Social Services Department, on spreading the culture of internal auditing in government departments in the Emirate of Sharjah.
Nada Shuhail, Director of the Internal Audit Office at the Sharjah Finance Department, began the workshop topics with an opening speech in which she emphasised the importance of the partnership between the department and the rest of the government entities in the Emirate in order to enhance financial leadership, through many joint initiatives and projects, including the initiative to spread the culture of internal auditing in it, as an activity, profession and practice that any successful organisation cannot do without. Internal auditing is closely linked to the objectives of evaluating and improving the efficiency of risk management, internal control systems and governance laws, and with the strategic objectives of the business.
She pointed out that internal auditing has today become a guarantee of optimal security and the first shield of protection against any risks, losses and threats that business entities may face in their dealings with all relevant parties, whether employees or customers, as well as suppliers, partners and financial institutions, and regulatory and legislative bodies of all kinds.
She explained that many of the largest companies around the world neglected this important activity, or underestimated the role of internal auditing in them, which made them exposed to financial or administrative problems that led them to decline or go bankrupt, or at least lose their institutional and commercial reputation, and customers’ reluctance to do so, pointing out that the departments and internal audit offices have developed widely over the past years, and have moved from being merely an ordinary department to an effective and necessary department that participates and cooperates with the rest of the departments, and combines their efforts to protect institutions and make them keep pace with the various administrative, financial, and economic transformations that the world as a whole is witnessing.
The workshop included several main and sub-topics related to internal auditing as well as risks due to the great connection between them. It included an introduction to the concept of the internal audit activity, and a statement of the international professional practices framework for the practice of internal auditing. The internal audit charter and the services provided by this activity were also explained.
The workshop touched on clarifying the types of internal audit and its planning based on the risk assessment framework, in addition to the steps for developing a successful internal audit plan supported by illustrations that simplify the activity planning mechanism.
The workshop dealt with the topic of implementing the internal audit mission, in terms of planning and steps that ensure the success of each of these missions and achieving the desired goals of revealing observations according to their different categories.
Within the workshop’s topics, reference was made to the powers of the Internal Audit Office, the importance of continuing professional development for members of the office, the reference on which this activity is based, as well as a statement of the concept and charter of enterprise risk management, the services provided by the risk management activity, and the most important steps that must be followed when implementing the risks management process, in addition to performing the role of internal control in government entities.
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