M.Com. (Accounting & Auditing) / External and Internal auditors have to deal with computer systems which are becoming increasingly complex. An auditor's interest in such an environment is primarily an understanding of the controls over the computer system and the risk of error and fraud. When dealing with controls two issues are important. The first deals with the ability to control a complex computer system. Unless the control issues are understood and the impact of various alternatives appreciated it would be impossible to control a computer system. Under such circumstances there is a high risk of error and fraud and the information present in a business could be very unreliable. Secondly the auditor needs to evaluate controls for purposes of his audit. Usually the objective is to assure himself that they adequately safeguard the business assets and prevent or detect errors present in the accounting records of the concern...

The investigation of this study focused on the ability of provincial government departments in South Africa to spend allocated revenues on activities adequately, with a direct bearing on social and economic development. The research presents an analysis of two selected Eastern Cape Provincial Government departments’ expenditure for a three-year timeframe (the fiscal years from 2009–2012), with a focus on the oversight role played by the Provincial Planning and Treasury department in instilling fiscal discipline in the provinces, and the potentially detrimental effect of under-spending on provincial service delivery. Among other things mentioned and discussed are, firstly, the fiscal policy; secondly, the funding of provincial departments; thirdly, the role and responsibilities of the Provincial Planning and Treasury department. The study adopted a qualitative methodology which focussed on the perspective of the insider who has experienced first-hand the activities or procedures under scrutiny in the selected provincial departments. Further, the qualitative researcher believed that first-hand experience provides the most meaningful data. In support of this, the respondents were asked twenty-two questions, the first five of which were based on the need to understand their personal particulars. A semi-structured questionnaire was distributed to 43 officials and 22 of those questionnaires were returned.

The Office of the Auditor -General’s role is by no means minor, for it plays a major role in curbing corruption and acts as a ‘’watchdog’’ of the nation over public funds. Amidst high mismanagement and misuse of public resources, as well as corruption, especially in developing countries, the major question one asks is how effective the Auditor -General can be in ensuring good governance within state departments so as to improve service delivery. The gaps between approved budgets and the realisation of policy and development goals stand among key governance challenges in many developing countries. Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) play an important role in holding governments to account. However, many SAIs including AGSA face serious challenges when trying to evaluate the expenditures and performance of government agencies. Therefore this study suggests that more resources should be invested in the office of the AG so as to allow it to carry out its duties without impediments. Good governance and public finance accountability is becoming increasingly important in the public sector. One means of effecting good governance and accountability is through auditing. For this reason the Office of the Auditor-General through the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 (Act 108 of 1996 section 216 (1)) was established to facilitate and encourage good governance and effective accountability through auditing.

The South African Constitution ensures the right to adequate water, health services and a healthy environment (Government Gazette, 1996: 1251, 1255). Associated legislation and national strategies require that water resources and water services are rendered in a sustainable manner to ensure the rights enshrined in the Constitution are realised (Trialogue, 2010: 34; Government Gazette, 1998(c):11; Department of Water Affairs (DWA), 2003:9). South Africa is the 30th driest country in the world (DWA, 2013: iii), has impounded most of its surface water resources and has utilised 40 percent of the groundwater resource with remaining groundwater water quality uncertain (DWA, 2013:6-7). Despite achieving the basic water and sanitation Millennium Development Goals approximately 2.2 million and 4.5 million households still require access to basic services respectively (DWA, 2013:28-29). South Africa’s ten water boards play a key role in bulk water service provision. They supply 57 percent of the countries domestic water supply (DWA, 2013:19) and are required to provide sustainable water services (Government Gazette, 1997:35). The Department of Water Affairs (Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) as of June 2014) is mandated to monitor the performance of water boards and monitors of water boards through a Share Holders Compact (SHC) (Government Gazette, 1997: 50). The aim of the research is to achieve the following objectives: 1. Describe best practice for sustainability monitoring frameworks for water services. 2. Outline South Africa’s water services mandatory and voluntary requirements with regards to sustainability monitoring. 3. Evaluate South Africa’s current water services performance monitoring framework for water boards against findings from goals one and two. 4. Develop an improved framework for assessing South African water board’s performance in their compliance and sustainability journey. 5. Demonstrate the improved framework functionality with a sample of water boards audited performance data from the 2012/13 financial year. A qualitative normative theory evaluation research method was utilised to achieve first three objectives of the research. The objectives to first understand current best practice for sustainability monitoring frameworks and the mandatory requirements for water services sustainability monitoring frameworks in South Africa was achieved via an extensive literature review. The evaluation research method was used where South Africa’s current water services monitoring framework for water boards was evaluated for its adequacy to monitor sustainability compared with legislated requirements, national and international best practices (Hall et al, 2004: 55). Data collection for the evaluation research was sourced via documentation analysis. The 2012/13 water board audited annual reports, relevant national water services legislation, national and global water service sustainability monitoring best practices were critically reviewed. The review yielded a “thick description” of sustainability performance monitoring framework requirements that was used to evaluate the SHC (Holliday, 2002: 79). Despite the mandatory participation requirement for successful sustainability performance monitoring being met, the SHC was found to have inadequate aspects. It lacks an outcomes based approach, does not include environmental indicators, does not allow water board sustainability performance comparison and cannot indicate where individual water boards are on their sustainability journey. An improved sustainability performance monitoring framework for South African water boards is therefore proposed. This was developed with the assistance of an expert focus group drawn from multiple disciplines and organizations relevant to water board sustainability (Litosseliti, 2003: 8 and Hall et al, 2004: 51). The functionality of the framework is then demonstrated using 2012/13 audited performance data sourced from the annual reports of Overberg, Amatola, Rand and Umgeni Water boards. The proposed Water Services Sustainability Monitoring Framework (WSSMF) quantifies performance in terms of 10 water utility outcomes that are measured with 88 performance indicators that encompass the financial, social, environmental and governance dimensions of sustainability. The WSSMF demonstrated that the legislated intentions and best practice recommendations can be incorporated into an improved version of the SHC. Further refinement of the WSSMF is required. In depth engagement with DWS and all the water boards would promote the refinement of the indicator set, performance thresholds for indicators and indicator weighting. Further testing through a pilot project initiative would allow the WSSMF to be developed into a robust and adequate sustainability performance monitoring framework for South African water boards (Rametsteiner et al, 2011: 64; Muga and Mihelcic, 2008: 438; McAlphine and Birnie, 2005: 247 and van Leeuwen et al, 2012: 2192).

Amathole District Municipality has for the past five consecutive years been receiving an unqualified audit opinion from the AGSA. This has been the trend, despite the commitment made by the Executive Mayor in April 2012 to the then Auditor-General, Mr Nombembe, that the leadership of the municipality would deliver a clean audit outcome by 30 June 2013. This scenario is replicated in the local municipalities within the district. Two of the district municipalities have for the past three consecutive years been receiving a disclaimer audit opinion. In one of the municipalities, this trend changed; and this municipality received an unqualified audit opinion for two consecutive years; while in the third year, it received a qualified audit opinion. The stagnation and regression in the audit outcomes of these municipalities may be as a result of either the non-implementation of audit-action plans to address the previous year’s audit findings; or there could be other factors resulting in the above scenario. The main objective of this study is to investigate whether the utilisation of the Auditor-General’s reports improve the audit outcomes in selected municipalities within Amathole District Municipality for the period 01 July 2006 to 30 June 2015.

The twenty first century has identified knowledge, as opposed to labour, raw materials or capital, as the key resource required by firms. This has created a shift of ownership in relationships between employees and employers since employees own the tools of production through the knowledge they hold (Kinnear & Sutherland, 2000). The employment relationship is undergoing fundamental changes due to international competition, de-regularisation and globalisation which have major implications for attraction, motivation and retention of talented employees (De Vos & Meganck, 2009). Organisations face great challenges and intense competition with almost all strategies being easily replicable by competitors. This has led organisations to begin realising that people are in fact the only real differentiator that can gain the organisation competitive advantage (Munsamy & Bosch Venter, 2009). Turnover of employees costs South Africa millions of rands per annum through decreased productivity, increased accidents and quality problems. Specifically, loss of knowledge workers are identified through costs of hiring and training new employees, loss of institutional knowledge, lower office morale, loss of talent and customer dissatisfaction. It is therefore essential to understand the reasons why employees leave organisations in order to discover how to retain them (Mendes & Stander, 2011; Gaylard, Sutherland & Viedge, 2005). Employee turnover can have several negative consequences. It can be difficult to replace the departed employees and the cost of replacing employees can be exhaustive. Remaining employees can be left feeling demoralised from the loss of valued co-workers and work patterns can be disrupted until replacements are found (Newstrom and Davis, 1997). Bilal, Zia-ur-Rehman, and Raza, (2010) add to this list of negative consequences of turnover as turnover can increase recruitment and training costs, loss of productivity as projects lose continuity, interruption of key activities, increase in mistakes made, or even hiring the wrong person for the position.

The Office of the Auditor -General’s role is by no means minor, for it plays a major role in curbing corruption and acts as a ‘’watchdog’’ of the nation over public funds. Amidst high mismanagement and misuse of public resources, as well as corruption, especially in developing countries, the major question one asks is how effective the Auditor -General can be in ensuring good governance within state departments so as to improve service delivery. The gaps between approved budgets and the realisation of policy and development goals stand among key governance challenges in many developing countries. Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) play an important role in holding governments to account. However, many SAIs including AGSA face serious challenges when trying to evaluate the expenditures and performance of government agencies. Therefore this study suggests that more resources should be invested in the office of the AG so as to allow it to carry out its duties without impediments. Good governance and public finance accountability is becoming increasingly important in the public sector. One means of effecting good governance and accountability is through auditing. For this reason the Office of the Auditor-General through the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 (Act 108 of 1996 section 216 (1)) was established to facilitate and encourage good governance and effective accountability through auditing. To this end the study assesses the contribution made by the AGSA in encouraging good governance practices in government departments in the Eastern Cape Province.

Thesis (Ph. D. (Public Administration)) -- University of Limpopo, 2016. / This research examines the effectiveness of the factors that have been introduced to bring about progress to clean audit outcomes in South African municipalities. This research has become increasingly important as the democratic dispensation in South Africa has witnessed a gradual weakening of public financial accountability. As a consequence of this ongoing decline, the National Government initiated the campaign “operation clean audit” as a means to achieve a new level of improved audit outcomes. The Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) identified three key factors that would drive improved audit outcomes, namely leadership, financial management and governance. Given that “operation clean audit” had seemingly become an elusive dream by 2014, the researcher decided to examine the relative effectiveness of the causative variables identified by the AGSA as key to achieving improved audit outcomes. This research therefore was intended to make a contribution to the body of academic knowledge by pursuing the following objectives: to examine the effect of leadership on the achievement of clean audit outcomes in the South African public service; to analyse the effectiveness of financial management in the South African public service; to evaluate the effect of governance on the achievement of clean audit outcomes in the South African public service, and to propose a framework for understanding the factors that affect clean audit outcomes in the South African public service. To achieve the research objectives, the research applied a positivist paradigm and a quantitative approach. Data were collected from the AGSA’s consolidated municipal reports from the nine provinces of the Republic. Hence, the study was limited to the use of municipal audit reports, consolidated into single reports for all the municipalities in each of the provinces over a period of years. Thus, the study examines a total of nine consolidated reports for each of the five years between 2009/2010 – 2013/2014. Using the panel data approach, this produced a set of nine cross sectional units and 5 periods which thus produced 45 time series observations. Subsequently, a panel data multiple regression analysis was conducted to analyse the data. After correcting the model for heteroskedaskicity, the results from the regression analysis revealed important relationships in only two dimensions. On the one hand, the three independent variables – leadership, financial management and governance – jointly vi have a significant relationship with clean audit outcomes, with a P value P<0.000, which is substantially below the 5% alpha level anticipated for this research. The independent variables were each examined for their individual effects on clean audit results. Results show that only governance has a significant and direct effect on the achievement of a clean audit. Given that governance has a substantially stronger impact on the achievement of clean audits (far more than do the other variables), further analysis was conducted to determine the variables that influence the efficiency of governance. The results reveal that the effectiveness of the audit committee has an overriding influence on the ability of an entity to achieve clean audits. The findings thus appear to confirm the Auditor General’s broad claim that leadership, financial management and governance are the key drivers to improved audit outcomes: but further analysis reveals that this happens only when the three variables are analysed as a single unit, to examine whether they significanly enhance clean audit outcomes. As single variables, only governance proved to affect clean audit outcomes significantly. The findings from the analysis thus corroborates the literature, thus achieving the first three research objectives. Arising from this analysis, the researcher was able to propose a framework for understanding the factors that affect an entity’s progression to clean audit. This constituted the achievement of research objective 4, and makes a contribution to the current body of knowledge on the topic. Thus, this research contributes to knowledge in that it develops a framework for understanding the factors that affect the achievement of a clean audit, and proposes two key approaches to further research and improve public sector auditing: a model to research the variables that affect audit committee effectiveness; and a practical approach that includes additional variables (drawn from the framework) during the public sector audit. Key words Accountability, accounting, audit committee, audit quality, clean audit, financial management, governance, leadership, public administration, public policy, public sector, supreme audit institution. / Faculty of Economics and of Finance at the Tshwane University of Technology, and the Faculty of Management and Law at the University of Limpopo

Audit evidence enables the auditor to express an opinion on the financial statements. To address the risk that the auditor may express an inappropriate opinion, the nature, timing and extent of audit procedures must be responsive to the assessed risks of material misstatement. The auditor must aggregate the levels of assurance obtained from different combinations of tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to respond to the assessed risks. These evidence planning decisions are complex and require professional judgement. Research has found that the extent of audit procedures is not linked to the assessed risks and that auditors may not know to aggregate evidence from different types of audit procedures. Research also supports the use of a structured audit methodology that includes decision models, to guide the application of professional judgement. This leads to the overall objective of this study: the development of an integrated audit evidence planning model to quantify the extent of audit evidence. The study employs a grounded theory model building approach, interpreting the relevant concepts and principles from the literature review into the development of the model. The integrated audit evidence planning model quantitatively relates the extent of audit evidence in a logical and structured manner with the risk assessment and three distinct overall levels of assurance needed to support the audit opinion. It uses the cumulative nature of audit evidence and the compensatory inter-relationship between tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to quantitatively aggregate the extent and levels of assurance from the different combinations of procedures to obtain reasonable assurance at the required overall level of assurance. The model provides a framework for influencing and guiding the exercise of professional judgement and is a practical and effective tool to benefit the users thereof when conducting an audit. Thus, the study models the extent of audit evidence with reference to the aggregation of different types and combinations of evidence and the linkage between the risk assessment and the extent of evidence that provides a flexible framework for the application of professional judgement regarding the gathering of audit evidence. / Auditing / D. Com. (Auditing)

Audit evidence enables the auditor to express an opinion on the financial statements. To address the risk that the auditor may express an inappropriate opinion, the nature, timing and extent of audit procedures must be responsive to the assessed risks of material misstatement. The auditor must aggregate the levels of assurance obtained from different combinations of tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to respond to the assessed risks. These evidence planning decisions are complex and require professional judgement. Research has found that the extent of audit procedures is not linked to the assessed risks and that auditors may not know to aggregate evidence from different types of audit procedures. Research also supports the use of a structured audit methodology that includes decision models, to guide the application of professional judgement. This leads to the overall objective of this study: the development of an integrated audit evidence planning model to quantify the extent of audit evidence. The study employs a grounded theory model building approach, interpreting the relevant concepts and principles from the literature review into the development of the model. The integrated audit evidence planning model quantitatively relates the extent of audit evidence in a logical and structured manner with the risk assessment and three distinct overall levels of assurance needed to support the audit opinion. It uses the cumulative nature of audit evidence and the compensatory inter-relationship between tests of controls, substantive analytical procedures and tests of details to quantitatively aggregate the extent and levels of assurance from the different combinations of procedures to obtain reasonable assurance at the required overall level of assurance. The model provides a framework for influencing and guiding the exercise of professional judgement and is a practical and effective tool to benefit the users thereof when conducting an audit. Thus, the study models the extent of audit evidence with reference to the aggregation of different types and combinations of evidence and the linkage between the risk assessment and the extent of evidence that provides a flexible framework for the application of professional judgement regarding the gathering of audit evidence. / Auditing / D. Com. (Auditing)