Networking with non-SAI stakeholders has been a priority for WGEI since the beginning. In October this year, the WGEI entered into a consortium with a group of non-SAI stakeholders to seek donor support for extractive industry audit and civil society dialogue.
A number of multilateral organization and initiatives, government bodies as well as civil society organizations are working to promote good governance within the extractive industries.
SAI’s engagement with external stakeholders is therefor of great importance, as it allows knowledge and experience sharing across the industry. It may help SAIs identify and respond to emerging risks and challenges, and it may identify partnerships for resource mobilization. Moreover, the engagement of external stakeholders promotes awareness as well as increased understanding of SAIs within a society at large, and may enhance SAIs’ impact as their role and report findings are made available to a larger public. The WGEI has therefore made it one of its objective to promote networking and stakeholder engagement within the WGEI community.
Funding proposal for DFID
In October 2017, the WGEI Steering Committee was invited to join a consortium of civil society and media organizations working to ensure better resource governance. Apart from INTOSAI WGEI, the consortium is composed of Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) as consortium lead, Publish What You Pay (PWYP), the African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME) and BudgIT, an organization working to make national budgets accessible to ordinary people.
The strength of this consortium is to amplify the role of each stakeholder, by improving the capacity of and building links between supreme audit institutions, the media, and civil society in target countries.
Together, the consortium of five partners submitted a project and funding proposal to the British development agency DFID under their “open societies” initiative. The consortium is seeking funding for both global and country-level activities that help increase access to information, public dialogue scrutiny of the extractive industries. In a first phase, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia will be targeted. In a second phase, three additional countries will be added based on DFID’s selection criteria.
From WGEI’s side, a number of activities have been proposed – in line with the WGEI’s three year work plan:
- Support to SAIs wishing to develop EI audit strategies, including strategies for report dissemination
- Guidelines development and haring of best practice and experiences from EI audit amongst members of WGEI Community of Practice
- INTOSAI WGEI toolkit produced for SAI engagement with external stakeholders
Initial feedback on the proposal is expected from DFID by the end of December 2017 and will be shared with WGEI members. If the consortium is successful in securing DFID support, the WGEI SC will appoint a project focal point whom members can contact with input and inquiries.
In the meanwhile, WGEI members are invited to share their own strategies, stories and best practice examples of external stakeholder engagement with through the WGEI newsletter and website.
Consortium partners and links: