Professional standards
The Public Sector Internal Audit Standards [1312 External Assessments] requires:
External Quality Assessments must be conducted at least once every five years by a qualified, independent assessor or assessment team from outside of the organisation
In September 2015 the Institute of Internal Auditors were commissioned to complete an external assessment of the Southern Internal Audit Partnership.
In selecting the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) a conscious effort was taken to ensure the external assessment was undertaken by the most credible source. As the authors of the Standards and the leading Internal Audit authority nationally and internationally the IIA were excellently positioned to undertake the external assessment.
The assessment included review of a wide range of documentary evidence and interviews and surveys with representative stakeholders (including Chief Executives, Audit Chairs and S151 Officers) across existing partnering organisations in addition to members of the Southern Internal Audit Partnership staff.
In considering all sources of evidence the external assessment team concluded:
It is our view that the Southern Internal Audit Partnership (SIAP) service generally conforms to all of these principles. This performance is within the top decile of EQA reviews we have performed. This is a notable achievement given the breadth of these Standards and the operational environment faced by SIAP.
There are no instances across these standards where we determined a standard below "generally conforms", and 4 instances where the standard is assessed as "not applicable" due to the nature of SIAP's remit.
Southern Internal Audit Partnership - EQA REPORT
It is therefore appropriate for the Southern Internal Audit Partnership service to say in reports and other literature that it "conforms to the IIA’s professional standards" and that its work has been performed "in accordance with the IPPF."
Following the successful completion of the External Quality Assessment, the Head of the Southern Internal Audit Partnership was approached to take part in an interview for 'Audit and Risk' magazine to discuss expectations, experiences and reflections of the EQA process.
