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Auditing the SDGs: Progress to 2030 2020 Association of Chartered Certified Accountants March 2020 About ACCA ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants, offering business- relevant, first-choice qualifications to people of application, ability and ambition around the world who seek a rewarding career in accountancy, finance and management. ACCA supports its 219,000 members and 527,000 students (including affiliates) in 179 countries, helping them to develop successful careers in accounting and business, with the skills required by employers. ACCA works through a network of 110 offices and centres and 7,571 Approved Employers worldwide, and 328 approved learning providers who provide high standards of learning and development. Through its public interest remit, ACCA promotes appropriate regulation of accounting and conducts relevant research to ensure accountancy continues to grow in reputation and influence. ACCA has introduced major innovations to its flagship qualification to ensure its members and future members continue to be the most valued, up to date and sought-after accountancy professionals globally. Founded in 1904, ACCA has consistently held unique core values: opportunity, diversity, innovation, integrity and accountability. More information is here: Auditing the SDGs: Progress to 2030 About this report The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -17 interconnected social, economic, environmental and institutional targets to be achieved by 2030 were agreed in 2015 by all UN member countries. Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are assessing progress made by their governments towards achieving the SDGs. Around the world, SAIs are working in collaborative and innovative ways to examine how effective their governments have been at integrating the SDGs into national development plans and in assessing progress that is being made on issues like climate change, gender equality and poverty reduction. This report explores how SAIs examine the challenges presented by the SDGs to government decision-making and why their ability to hold governments to account on this ambitious agenda matters. 4 Foreword The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a common language roadmap to help countries in their transition towards better models of sustainable and inclusive prosperity creation. And with just ten years left until 2030 the year by which all countries have agreed to achieve the Goals they are a guide not just for the future, but also for action today. Governments need to move rapidly and use the SDGs to tackle many pressing problems that are now too urgent to ignore. These include the rising frequency of increasingly destructive climate change-related events, such as extreme weather, flooding and drought, the impacts of increasing natural capital destruction and species extinction. They also include the interconnected issues of worsening inequality and the growing difficulties for many in earning a living through work that is becoming more precarious and insecure. Building the systems that the SDGs need for delivery is the defining challenge of the next decade. As governments set out their plans to implement this much needed transition, the complexities and scale of the task ahead are becoming clearer. From the practicalities of achieving SDG-related policy coherence across different parts of government, to using new data sources and establishing agreed-upon metrics where gaps exist, making delivery a reality requires genuine and ongoing commitment. Thats why assessment and evaluation of countries preparedness to take on the SDG-related challenges, and their progress towards achieving them, matters. Around the world, Supreme Audit Institutions are examining how effective their governments have been at integrating and delivering the SDGs through their activities. They are bringing their skills to bear on this new set of intertwined social, economic, environmental and institutional challenges. And as they work on these cross-cutting issues, they are not only holding their governments to account, but they are also contributing to SDG 16 to build peace, justice and strong institutions and laying the foundations for future decades of accountability. The backdrop to achieving the SDGs is daunting. But thanks to the work of Supreme Audit Institutions, government action that is rightly being demanded by civil society is being scrutinised effectively, with recommendations feeding back into decision making to improve ongoing delivery. Helen Brand OBE Chief executive, ACCA Contents Executive summary 6 Introduction 8 1. The SDGs are here 11 2. SAIs and the SDGs: preparing for the future 16 3. The interconnected challenges 24 4. SAIs: collaborative models for the future and challenges ahead 31 References 33 6 Executive summary The Sustainable Development Goals are relevant for every nation and every community. No country can say that it has no inequality, or no urban poor being left behind, or no problems with pollution or climate change. And no country can say that it is immune from the global forces that will affect its success. Todays challenges to sustainable development and human progress do not respect borders. UN Secretary General, Antnio Guterres, February 2020 Auditing the SDGs: Progress to 2030 | Executive summary THE SDGS AND SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS n The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 17 interconnected social, economic, environmental and institutional objectives to be achieved by 2030 were agreed in 2015 by all UN member countries. They include many difficult trade-offs alongside welcome synergies. n As the SDGs reach their five-year anniversary it has been widely reported that governments are far off-track for achieving them by 2030. 1 n Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are assessing progress made by their governments towards preparing to implement and achieve the SDGs. They are also auditing performance on specific SDG targets. And as they complete this work, they proactively create accountable institutions prepared for the future, contributing to SDG 16. 2 n SAIs are expected to make a difference to the lives of the citizens in their respective countries through: strengthening the accountability, transparency and integrity of government and public sector entities; demonstrating continued relevance to citizens, parliaments and other stakeholders; and being model organisations and leading by example. 3 SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS: ADDRESSING SDG DELIVERY CHALLENGES n SAIs approaches to ways of working and strong engagement with the 2030 Agenda, can be a model for others looking to take on the challenges of today. They achieve this through: Well-developed and articulated global and regional knowledge sharing systems. Strong ethos and practice of cooperative working. Regional and global voice and advocacy coordination. Guidance and processes to support new audit areas presented by the SDGs. Online tools and resources to support the community. n The steps taken by SAIs to be involved in assessing progress towards these 21st century challenges are a part of the foundations of building a more resilient, SDG-aligned economy and society. Interconnected areas for the future for SAIs, governments and civil society collaboration on achieving the SDGs include: Finding more ways to incorporate SAIs into SDG assessment as early as possible and stronger advocacy of the case for doing so to improve SDG delivery by government. Engaging with a wider role for SAIs given the civil society-centred focus of the SDGs. Building resources and thinking for addressing new data challenges that the SDGs present. Continuing to construct a networked approach to the SDGs to fully realise the potential of addressing interconnected challenges together. 7 1 SDSN, 2019. 2 SDG 16 to promote peace, justice and strong institutions. 3 INTOSAI P-12 The Value and Benefits of Supreme Audit Institutions making a difference to the lives of citizens. A DECADE OF ACTION: ASSESSING PROGRESS IN TAKING ON URGENT ISSUES n The SDGs are needed more than ever because: 1. The natural world is undergoing an unnatural process of degradation due to modern economy- engineered activities. 2. Societies are growing more unequal. They are also becoming more urban and people are living longer. 3. The process of globalisation has changed how people interact with each other. Gains are weighted to those who are able to participate in these exchanges over those that cant. 4. Infrastructure demands are straining existing capacity from healthcare systems to power networks, and environmental resilience efforts. Both physical and institutional infrastructures are struggling to cope with changing and increasing demands. n This decade of action can be alternatively understood as a decade of transition transitioning from one model that is no longer fit for purpose, to a more appropriate one. One that is resilient to the risks, corrective of inherent market and governance failures and capable of opening up new opportunities for all. Thats why robust and well-communicated assessment of SDG-issue related integration, policy coherence and performance is essential. 8 Imagine a real-time dashboard, accessible by mobile phone, that tracked a countrys progress towards each of the 169 targets that make up the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Introduction It would show information about, for example, how a country was doing on eliminating poverty (SDG 1) and in taking climate action (SDG 13). This dashboard could also display information about a local area or a specific issue, what had been achieved and what was left to do by 2030. It could show, for example, geo- located pollution levels alongside steps taken and plans for the future to improve air quality in that area (SDG 11.6). Easy-to- understand and with integrated feedback functionality, this service could be used by citizens to engage with what their government was doing on the SDGs, at national, regional and municipal level. It would provide SDG snapshots across areas that people believed were important to them, showing how well they were doing in reaching a set of targets. Behind this dashboard would be a range of data feeds from national statistics offices and related agencies. And behind those data feeds would sit a raft of preparation, planning and implementation decisions. These decisions would be collaboratively agreed upon, taking into account cross-cutting issues along with the potential synergies and trade-offs inherent in the SDGs, to ensure effective use of resources to support delivery. They would be approved at the highest level, where appropriate extending across different government departments and down through subnational, regional and municipal administrative tiers to reach out to wider institutional and civil society stakeholders. Users of the dashboard would be reassured to know that the data feeds were accurate. They would also be FIGURE 1: Data, integration, decison making and assessment to support an SDG dashboard u SDG dashboard u SDG integration into national plans u SDG Data feeds u Cross cutting decison making approaches ASSESSMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS Auditing the SDGs: Progress to 2030 | Introduction encouraged to know that the decision- making processes behind them would be continuously scrutinised to make sure that they were fit for purpose. They would know that if they wanted to find out more about how a plan was finalised and realised, for example, to tackle modern slavery, or to improve urban mobility, they would be able to find an authoritative and independent evaluation of the steps taken. This assessment would come under the remit of the countrys Supreme Audit Institution (SAI), or National Audit Office. The role of the SAI is to scrutinise government plans, what they achieve through their plans and to make constructive recommendations for improvements. The SDGs, agreed by all member nations at the UN in 2015, are now in their fifth out of fifteen years. So far, to differing degrees, the SDGs are integrated into countries plans for achieving progress. Also, in many countries, a type of dashboard is up and running (try Googling: SDGs dashboard United Kingdom). National SAIs, supported by their international body INTOSAI and other relevant regional and national associations and organisations, have been evaluating the extent to which the SDGs are integrated into country plans (see Figure 1 for regional INTOSAI organisations map). As with other forms of scrutiny of effectiveness of government plans, or of budgets, that they undertake, SAIs are also tasked with monitoring and evaluating thematic SDG-related issues. Government performance on specific thematic social, economic and environmental issues, linked to the SDGs, is an important issue for citizens. This SDG issue-specific assessment is becoming a growing field of work for SAIs that logically follows a first step looking at how prepared governments are to implement them. It is for this reason that INTOSAI included Contributing to the follow-up and review of the sustainable development goals within the context of each nations specific sustainable development efforts, as a cross-cutting strategic priority in its Strategic Plan for 2017-2022 (INTOSAI, 2017). As with other forms of scrutiny of effectiveness of government plans, or of budgets, that they undertake, SAIs are also tasked with monitoring and evaluating thematic SDG-related issues. 9 FIGURE 2: INTOSAI Regional organisations Source: INTOSAI (n.d.) Auditing the SDGs: Progress to 2030 | Introduction 10 The interconnection of social, environmental and economic issues and the need for deeper stakeholder engagement require a shift in focus. According to The Value and Benefits of SAIs, the fundamental expectation of SAIs is to make a difference to the lives of the citizens in their respective countries through: strengthening the accountability, transparency and integrity of government and public sector entities; demonstrating continued relevance to citizens, parliaments and other stakeholders; and being model organisations and leading by example. Source: INTOSAI-P - 12 The Value and Benefits of Supreme Audit Institutions making a difference to the lives of citizens. The value and benefits of SAIs SAIs making a difference to the lives of citizens Strengthening the accountability, transparency and integrity of government and public sector entities Demonstrating ongoing relevance to citizens, Parliament and other stakeholders Being a model organization through leading by example Hence, SAIs include explicitly SDG- related issues in their audit plans. They are adhering to SDG-related frameworks and guidance from their regional and international bodies on how to examine specific topics. They are sharing their findings with civil society in their countries in accordance their respectiv
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