Country Office Performance Audits
Data Owner
Availability in Data Warehouse
Available
Data Refresh Rate
Daily
Accountability Weighted Scoring
30%
Introduction
Country Office Audits are audits performed by OAI (Office of Audit and Investigations). They measure compliance with corporate rules and regulations. The Performance App takes data from 2018 onwards for all the Country Office audits captured in CARDS and published on the Audit Public Disclosure website. We showcase the rating from the latest country office audit, as some country offices may have had multiple audits during that period.
There are four main possible audit ratings:
Fully Satisfactory
Minor Improvements
Major Improvements
Unsatisfactory
The underlying data has more categories, but we have mapped it as follows:
Fully Satisfactory
Fully Satisfactory
Good
Fully Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Fully Satisfactory
Partially Satisfactory/SI
Satisfactory/Some Improvement Needed
Partially Satisfactory
Satisfactory/Some Improvement Needed
Satisfactory/Some Improvement Needed
Satisfactory/Some Improvement Needed
Marginally Deficient
Partially Satisfactory/Major Improvement Needed
Partially Satisfactory/Major Improvement Needed
Partially Satisfactory/Major Improvement Needed
Partially Satisfactory/MI
Partially Satisfactory/Major Improvement Needed
Seriously Deficient
Unsatisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Deficient
Unsatisfactory
An audit will result in a set of recommendations that are tracked in a system called CARDS, managed by OAI. The Country Office is responsible for implementing these recommendations and providing status updates via CARDS within specific timeframes. Once the updates are provided, OAI evaluates them to confirm whether the recommendations have been implemented.
The recommendations are flagged according to the following traffic-light methodology based on OAI's assessment of the implementation status:
0-12 months
Great
Green
12-18 months
Acceptable
Yellow
18+ months
Unacceptable
Red
Organisational Objective
The organisational objective is the best audit performance possible, with no unsatisfactory audits and maximising entirely satisfactory audits. Additionally, the fastest and comprehensive implementation of the audit recommendations.
Data
Check that we are not missing the field here for the actual main result of the audit
as_of_date
Date of data extraction or last update.
audit_categ
Category or type of audit (e.g., OAI - Office of Audit and Investigations).
audited_bureau
Bureau or regional office audited (e.g., RBAS - Regional Bureau for Arab States).
audited_org_id_c
Unique identifier for the audited organization.
audited_cty_code
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (e.g., MAR - Morocco).
audited_unit_desc
Description of the audited unit.
action_bureau
Bureau responsible for audit action.
action_org_id_c
Identifier for the action organization.
action_cty_code
Country code for the action location.
action_unit_desc
Description of the action unit.
action_responsible_person
Name or title of the responsible person.
audit_id
Unique audit identifier.
audit_title
Title of the audit.
audit_period_start
Start date of the audit period.
audit_period_end
End date of the audit period.
audit_issue_date
Date when the audit report was issued.
audit_type
Type of audit conducted (e.g., COA - Country Office Audit).
reco_no
Number of the recommendation.
recom_id
Unique recommendation identifier.
reco_title
Title or summary of the recommendation.
reco_descr
Detailed recommendation description.
reco_planned_imnpl_d
Planned implementation date for the recommendation.
reco_priority
Priority level (e.g., High, Medium, Low).
reco_oai_status
Status of the recommendation (e.g., Implemented, In Progress, Not Implemented, Withdrawn).
reco_open
Binary indicator of recommendation status (0 = closed, 1 = open).
sub_domain
Specific organizational domain (e.g., SRF - Strategic Results Framework).
Data Export
Requires definition
Calculation of Scoring
We score only using each country's latest CO audit reports. Previous historical audit ratings are shown in the indicator drill down but are not considered in the scoring methodology.
For each audit result, we assign the following scores:
Fully Satisfactory
100
Satisfactory / Some Improvement Needed
80
Partially Satisfactory / Major Improvement Needed
60
Unsatisfactory
0
Unsatisfactory is rated as zero. We want to significantly reduce the aggregate scores if even a small number of country offices in a region have Unsatisfactory audit ratings because these are so important to the organisation.
For Regional Bureau aggregation, we take an average of all the scoring, and the global average is calculated as an average of all country scores, not as an average of the Regional Bureau aggregation. This is to avoid skewed results, as different Regional Bureaus have different numbers of country offices. No weight is attached to country population size, amount of programming, or office size/budget.
Traffic Light System
Green
80+
Yellow
70+
Red
<70
Limitations & Future Improvements
Not incorporating country size, budget, programming amount, and other key details into weightings could fail to account for larger country offices' naturally higher complexity and risk exposure. Weightings may better reflect performance. An office with many projects and budgets receiving an Unsatisfactory audit rating is far more important to the organization than a smaller office receiving an Unsatisfactory audit rating — but this is currently not reflected in the methodology.
Looking only at the latest audit per country loses historical context. Incorporating a rolling 3-5-year average could smooth out anomalies and show improvement/regression over time.
No qualitative context is provided on why audits scored the way they did or what actions are being taken. Incorporating audit insights could make the data more meaningful.
We do not take into account the management responses in the scoring methodology, but we do show it in the drill-down
Resources
CARDS (Requires invitation from OAI)
Last updated