Good Practices Development Group

Background

By 2012 the IIAG had been running seminars and conferences successfully for over a decade.  The Committee Members were keen build on this success and respond to a growing number of requests from IIAG associates for a separate, open discussion forum.  The first of these meetings took place later that year.  Initially the focus was on discussing common challenges and sharing good practices but it quickly became more solution-oriented, with teams being stood up to work on one or two projects each year.  Once it became clear that there was ongoing demand for this kind of work, the IIAG Committee established the Good Practices Development Group (GPDG).  For over a decade now, the GPDG has sought to harness best in class working practices on topical subjects identified by IIAG associates themselves.

Aims and Purpose

In accordance with its Term of Reference and in pursuit of the vision and objectives of the IIAG, the aims and purpose of the GPDG is to:

• Develop materials for people to use in their day-to-day work, including, but not limited to, good practice guidance, benchmarking of practices, audit programmes, and technical analysis;
• Develop thought leadership on key issues faced in the day-to-day running of an internal audit department and in auditing;
• Promote good systems of governance, with particular focus on internal control risk management;
• Provide feedback on our research projects to the wider IIAG, with consideration of what outputs could be shared with regulators, the CIIA, and other relevant bodies and forums;
• Provide a support network and sounding board on topical issues.

Indicative output

The GPDG has an extensive back-catalogue of completed projects which is made available to associates via the IIAG website. 

The projects generally fall into one of two categories: surveys/questionnaires which are intended to inform and allow associates to benchmark their team, and (ii) detailed ‘how to’ projects, which combine best practice and the audit expertise of the project team to develop the approach and key tests required to complete a particular audit. 

Over the years, IIAG associates have directed the GPDG to develop guidance relating to highly topical subjects, with one of the earliest projects looking at how to audit ‘risk culture, ethics and values’ after the CIIA’s FS Code set that expectation in 2013.  Other requests have sought guidance for more routine aspects of internal auditing, such as how audit plans are developed, reports drafted and the extent to which data analytics is used in testing. 

Other examples of GPDG projects are listed below to show the breadth of the work:

• Auditing Operational Resilience
• Agile auditing for smaller audit teams
• Internal Audit Teams' Response to COVID 19
• Auditing programmes
• Auditing cyber incident response
• Auditing Board strategy
• Managing co-sourcing effectively
• Auditing outsourced processes
• Rating of audit observations and reports

Refer to Knowledge section for materials produced by the GPDG (registered users only access).

Engagement

The members of the GPDG’s Organising Committee routinely attend IIAG seminars and would be happy to discuss the work of the Group in more detail. 

Outside of IIAG events, the Chair of the GPDG can be contacted via administrator@iiag.org.uk