Cordoba bares COA plans to go digital
IN a bid to lessen audit anomalies, Commission on Audit (COA) Chairperson Gamaliel Cordoba announced the plans of the commission to shift to digital system and operations.
In a statement, Cordoba bared the commission’s strategic plans on digitizing its systems along with his 10-point agenda.
Just recently, at least 140 senior officials of the COA gathered in a planning conference to discuss the plans that will be executed in the next seven years.
According to Cordoba, the COA plans to digitalize the government’s accounting system and by using artificial intelligence would spot patterns or anomalies to easily detect fraud.
“The shifting towards digitalization include developing an easy to implement government accounting system that is compliant with international standards,” Cordoba said.
Likewise, the government transactions will be digital, as well as the conduct of audits via “e-audit.”
“This will include collections, in partnership with all government agencies,” he emphasized.
The COA Chairperson expressed hopes that leveraging technology would improve audit techniques and procedures and that there will be enhanced communication with the audited agencies and bodies with oversight over COA audit reports, especially Congress.
In early 2023, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. said that his administration will ramp up measures this year to digitalize the government to ensure efficient and fast delivery of services to the public.
“These strategic thrusts focus on developing an easy to implement and technology driven government accounting system compliant with international standards; introducing e-audit as the manner of conducting audit through digitizing government transactions including collections in partnership with all government agencies; and leveraging technology to improve audit techniques and procedures including the development of an automated audit system for e-collections and e-payments and use of artificial intelligence to crunch big data to determine patterns and detect fraud,” Cordoba added.
These strategic thrusts are in line with Marcos call to embrace digitalization and adopt technological innovations to make the country more competitive.
