We have published our Draft annual plan 2022/23 and are seeking feedback on our proposed work programme.

This plan sets out the discretionary work that we intend to carry out during 2022/23. These include performance audits where we look at questions of the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending, reports on various sectors such as tertiary education and local government, special studies, commentaries and research, and good practice guidance.

We developed our draft annual plan after considering feedback from select committees, information gathered through our audits and other work with public organisations and from our central and local government advisory groups. This year for the first time we also surveyed a nationally representative cross-section of about 1000 New Zealanders to find out what is most important to them. As a result of the public feedback, we have added a performance audit on the progress the Government is making to reduce child poverty.

In this draft annual plan, we propose to continue our priority areas from 2021/22. These include how well the public sector is improving the lives of New Zealanders – including work on family and sexual violence, housing and education, how well the public accountability system is working – with particular focus on accountability to Māori, climate change, cyber security and integrity, keeping New Zealanders informed about public sector performance and accountability – with work focused predominantly on performance reporting, and sharing insights about what “good” looks like – by extending our good practice work and our support for audit and risk committees.

The Government’s response to, and New Zealand’s recovery from, the Covid-19 pandemic also remains an important part of our work programme.

Your views on our proposed work programme, and on what is most important to you, will help us understand how we can further refine our selection of topics to work on in 2022/23. We also welcome feedback on topics we could consider over the next several years. Feedback is requested by Friday 27 May 2022 and can be sent to enquiry@oag.parliament.nz.

Performance reporting

We’ve recently published some new guidance about performance reporting, highlighting good practice examples in public organisations’ annual reports.

This joint guidance from the Office of the Auditor-General, Audit New Zealand, and the Treasury focuses on public organisations in central government. It aims to help people in central government prepare better reports on the performance of their public organisation, particularly the annual report.

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