During the stressful moment of my interview in DFID-Nepal for the position of Head of Finance & Administration, one of the interview panel members opened an interesting but challenging question to me "Do you heard about public auditing?". I mapped my mind for answer with a mixed feeling of interest, anxiety and ambiguity. Fortunately, I had read some of literatures, surfed the web and exercised by my own initiative in community level projects while I worked with Plan International, Nepal. Unfortunately, my experience on public auditing was not up to the substantial level that I excite to share with the panelists. It was hard time to manage the answer with the littlie knowledge and experience on public auditing. Anyway, I keep the hard answer going and gradually the hardness gone in the interview time.
I was lucky enough that I became successful in the above said interview. One of the priority work for familiarization with CSP, I flipped the log frame and found that it 100% of CSP-funded projects have to face public auditing that once shocked and push me in the ocean of challenge. Couple of days I spent on idea mapping that what could be the ideal model of public auditing for CSP, specially with the very limited number of finance staff (still we are two!) and coverage in scattered and geographically difficult project topography (initially, DFID-CSP was supposed to project funding in all 24 districts of mid & far western region of Nepal) to practice public auditing. Next few days dedicated for searching public auditing related matters with the like-minded organizations like CARE Nepal and in the web.
Nearly in the one month, I developed a skeleton for public auditing modality that could be ideal for CSP. Documenting the idea, perpetual polishing and adjustment of framework was the hard time to convince to the colleagues and superiors. Side by side, I was worried about implementation modality because the funded projects database was showing more than 50 projects when my tenure was running hardly in two months. Anyway, my colleagues support and superior's guidance was simply superb and I had a final draft of public auditing literature (customized for working environment of CSP) in my hand. The proposed modality, though quite challenging was just facilitating of public auditing in community by CSP but the ultimate target was transferring the skills to the community to make the public auditing process sustainable.
Project funded district numbers was already reached to 16 when we started public auditing practices in the field. It was ideologically a virgin land and the process was very new to us but we accepted the challenge and started to train local level consultants. Side by side we kept continuing to implement public auditing in the community projects. It was amazing experience to translate the theoretical framework into real life practice. Beginning days, I was bound to demonstrate the process in the field that sometimes led me tired, monotonous and likely to even fed-up. However, the local district level consultant's team grown up gradually and started to take over the responsibilities and CSP's role gradually started shifting towards monitoring of the quality of the public auditing process and reports submitted. Some good news started to come from field that the community people also started replicating the public auditing practices and produced very good examples that they can adopt the process. It was the first sweet returns of our team's hard work.
We in CSP team shared our practices in CSP-East as well where colleagues took lead to replicate the model. Its practice was streamlining, we sensed on the basis of the varieties of the queries we received, poor documentation and reporting led us to train the public auditing facilitators in a uniform way. The number of public auditing was overwhelming but from the monitoring point of view, compiling varieties of information is not easy to manage. The training skeleton was already in practice to train the facilitators; we decided to develop a training resource book to make the concept and practice of public auditing uniform. Writing the training manual, suggestion collection, editing and printing work nearly took six months. At last, a 39 pages training manual was in our hand that placed DFID-CSP as a pioneering organization in the field of public auditing. When CSP team members touch the manual with heartfelt warmth and share the chunk of success with gentle smile, it gives me a deep-laid satisfaction; an inner-seated team player inside me cheers - viola! we did it.
The training manual is in English language, aimed to spread the DFID-CSP public auditing modality with other like-minded development organization. However, the community people had complained that the English manual would not help them much to understand and practice public auditing. Yes, we have dream to spread the public auditing into the community as a good governance development-monitoring tool and thus how we can let the community to be out of the process? So what ? CSP team leader Mr. Moti Thapa suggested to develop a handbook in Nepali language to address this problem. Compilation of the materials, editing and printing work within one and half months was amazing. Yes, we now have 90 pages public auditing handbook in Nepali language.
Distribution of the Nepali handbook was in progress and one day I got a sweet shock. One of the my colleagues form Kathmandu informed me that some I/NGOs are eagerly requesting for public auditing training to their employees as they have studied both our publications. It was great time to me to facilitate the training where 10 renowned organization's senior managers (even of Country Director) actively participated in the training. Development organizations like Save the Children (USA), Winrock International, Plan International, Eco Himal, Helvetas Nepal and many others started public auditing adopting DFID-CSP's public auditing modality. Many of them are requesting to customize the training contents according to their organizational norms and principles.
We know that many things yet to done. What we did is a small part of our vision translated into reality. When the public will appreciate the concept and process of public auditing; its practice will boom as a good-governance development-monitoring tool; recognized by the state, the days will be really memorable and we may proud to claim a true success.
I was lucky enough that I became successful in the above said interview. One of the priority work for familiarization with CSP, I flipped the log frame and found that it 100% of CSP-funded projects have to face public auditing that once shocked and push me in the ocean of challenge. Couple of days I spent on idea mapping that what could be the ideal model of public auditing for CSP, specially with the very limited number of finance staff (still we are two!) and coverage in scattered and geographically difficult project topography (initially, DFID-CSP was supposed to project funding in all 24 districts of mid & far western region of Nepal) to practice public auditing. Next few days dedicated for searching public auditing related matters with the like-minded organizations like CARE Nepal and in the web.
Nearly in the one month, I developed a skeleton for public auditing modality that could be ideal for CSP. Documenting the idea, perpetual polishing and adjustment of framework was the hard time to convince to the colleagues and superiors. Side by side, I was worried about implementation modality because the funded projects database was showing more than 50 projects when my tenure was running hardly in two months. Anyway, my colleagues support and superior's guidance was simply superb and I had a final draft of public auditing literature (customized for working environment of CSP) in my hand. The proposed modality, though quite challenging was just facilitating of public auditing in community by CSP but the ultimate target was transferring the skills to the community to make the public auditing process sustainable.
Project funded district numbers was already reached to 16 when we started public auditing practices in the field. It was ideologically a virgin land and the process was very new to us but we accepted the challenge and started to train local level consultants. Side by side we kept continuing to implement public auditing in the community projects. It was amazing experience to translate the theoretical framework into real life practice. Beginning days, I was bound to demonstrate the process in the field that sometimes led me tired, monotonous and likely to even fed-up. However, the local district level consultant's team grown up gradually and started to take over the responsibilities and CSP's role gradually started shifting towards monitoring of the quality of the public auditing process and reports submitted. Some good news started to come from field that the community people also started replicating the public auditing practices and produced very good examples that they can adopt the process. It was the first sweet returns of our team's hard work.
We in CSP team shared our practices in CSP-East as well where colleagues took lead to replicate the model. Its practice was streamlining, we sensed on the basis of the varieties of the queries we received, poor documentation and reporting led us to train the public auditing facilitators in a uniform way. The number of public auditing was overwhelming but from the monitoring point of view, compiling varieties of information is not easy to manage. The training skeleton was already in practice to train the facilitators; we decided to develop a training resource book to make the concept and practice of public auditing uniform. Writing the training manual, suggestion collection, editing and printing work nearly took six months. At last, a 39 pages training manual was in our hand that placed DFID-CSP as a pioneering organization in the field of public auditing. When CSP team members touch the manual with heartfelt warmth and share the chunk of success with gentle smile, it gives me a deep-laid satisfaction; an inner-seated team player inside me cheers - viola! we did it.
The training manual is in English language, aimed to spread the DFID-CSP public auditing modality with other like-minded development organization. However, the community people had complained that the English manual would not help them much to understand and practice public auditing. Yes, we have dream to spread the public auditing into the community as a good governance development-monitoring tool and thus how we can let the community to be out of the process? So what ? CSP team leader Mr. Moti Thapa suggested to develop a handbook in Nepali language to address this problem. Compilation of the materials, editing and printing work within one and half months was amazing. Yes, we now have 90 pages public auditing handbook in Nepali language.
Distribution of the Nepali handbook was in progress and one day I got a sweet shock. One of the my colleagues form Kathmandu informed me that some I/NGOs are eagerly requesting for public auditing training to their employees as they have studied both our publications. It was great time to me to facilitate the training where 10 renowned organization's senior managers (even of Country Director) actively participated in the training. Development organizations like Save the Children (USA), Winrock International, Plan International, Eco Himal, Helvetas Nepal and many others started public auditing adopting DFID-CSP's public auditing modality. Many of them are requesting to customize the training contents according to their organizational norms and principles.
We know that many things yet to done. What we did is a small part of our vision translated into reality. When the public will appreciate the concept and process of public auditing; its practice will boom as a good-governance development-monitoring tool; recognized by the state, the days will be really memorable and we may proud to claim a true success.
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