Public Finance Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Responses of the State Audit Office

Abstract

Meas­ures in­tro­duced world­wide in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­demic have brought with them the po­ten­tial for a crisis to de­velop. A crisis, by its nature, will pose a chal­lenge to all of us. However, a chal­lenge will also cre­ate op­por­tun­it­ies to im­ple­ment a qual­it­at­ive change. This art­icle presents the chal­lenges the State Audit Of­fice has faced dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­demic, as part of its day-to-day work and when ana­lys­ing the ef­fects of the pan­demic. Re­stric­tions on per­sonal con­tacts have in­duced or­gan­iz­a­tional changes and in­teg­rity risks have in­creased. In re­sponse to these chal­lenges, or­gan­iz­a­tional changes have taken place, cov­er­ing as­pects such as work or­gan­iz­a­tion and di­git­al­isa­tion. The State Audit Of­fice has in­tro­duced new types of audits to in­crease audit cov­er­age, thereby con­trib­ut­ing to a re­duc­tion in in­creased risks of cor­rup­tion, and thus to the func­tion­ing of a well-gov­erned state. The SAO has pro­duced an in­creased num­ber of ana­lyses on pub­lic fin­ance to serve as a basis for its ad­vis­ory activ­it­ies in­ten­ded to help achieve the goals of the Gov­ern­ment. In budget man­age­ment, the concept of re­si­li­ence had to be re­in­ter­preted and the aim of en­sur­ing fiscal bal­ance had to be sub­or­din­ated to the fin­an­cing of meas­ures to strengthen the re­si­li­ence of the eco­nomy as a whole. A new chal­lenge is posed by the fact that, con­cur­rently to ef­forts for re­start­ing the eco­nomy, steps must also be made to con­sol­id­ate the bal­ance of the budget.