INTOSAI Working Group on the Audit of Privatisation

Papers for the Eighth Meeting
Budapest, 11 and 12 June 2001

USING THE WORKING GROUP'S WEBSITE (www.nao.gov.uk/intosai/wgap)

Note by the Chairman

1 This paper describes the patterns of use of the Working Group on the Audit of Privatisation website over the last year, updating the paper presented to the Working Group’s Seventh Meeting in Buenos Aires.

Introduction

2 The website was established in 1999 to provide a resource to Working Group Members so that they can obtain quickly and easily the key papers of the Working Group. This is in pursuit of one of our key remits "to exchange information on the range of experience within the Working Group’s membership". The website is managed by the UK National Audit Office, who provide the secretariat of the Working Group, and is accessible freely to anyone with access to the Internet. It is managed by Ed Humpherson ( telephone number: +44 207 798 7115, email through the National Audit Office enquiries desk, please mark your email for his attention). The website’s home page is available from the link below:

http://www.nao.gov.uk/intosai/wgap/

Use of the Website

3 The website is increasingly popular. We have had some 9,000 visits to the website pages in 6 months to 31 March 2001, 4,900 in the quarter to 31 December 2000 and 5,200 in the quarter to 31 March 2001. At the Buenos Aires meeting (September 2000), we reported some 3,000 visits to the website in the quarter to June 2000, so quarter by quarter over the last year there has been a sustained increase in the use of the website. The half year total of 9,000 to 31 March 2001 compares to 6,500 in the half year to September 2000, an increase of over 30 per cent.

4 On average, we now receive around 350 to 450 visits to the website pages each week. Leading up to the Buenos Aires meeting, we were observing between 200 and 300 visits per week. The attached graph shows the weekly figures over the last year, and it demonstrates clearly the increased use made of the website.

5 The heaviest weeks of use were 12-19 November 2000 and 4-11 February 2001. The week of 12-19 November was the first full week after we had placed draft audit guidelines on economic regulation and on public/private finance and concessions onto the website, while the 4-11 February figures show a surge in visits across most of the pages of the website. We do not know the identities of those who visit the pages, but anecdotal evidence, for example the requests for further information that we receive, implies that users of the website include not only Working Group members but many other SAIs, international institutions such as the World Bank and others such as academics and consultants.

6 The most popular pages, in order of number of visits, are shown in Figure 2. They show that readers and others are referring regularly to the privatisation guidelines and to the draft guidelines on economic regulation and public/private finance. The table also shows that the provision of translations of key working group texts is popular with readers.

Figure 2: Most popular pages

Number of visits	Website page
Over 1,000	- Guidelines on the audit of privatisation (Spanish)
500 to 1,000	- Draft guidelines on the audit of public-private finance and concessions (English)
	- Guidelines on the audit of privatisation (English)
250 to 500	- Draft guidelines Economic Regulation (English)
	- Guidelines on the audit of privatisation (French)
	- Accountability and Audit Post Privatisation – Presentation by Pat Barrett, Auditor-General for Australia, to the Warsaw Meeting of the Working Group
	- Directory of Privatisation Audit
	- Supplementary guidelines on public-private finance and concessions (English)
	- Guidelines on the audit of privatisation (German)
	- Survey of economic regulation, July 1999
	- Draft guidelines on Economic Regulation (Spanish)

Increasing the Use of electronic communication by Working Group Members

7 As we noted in our paper to the Buenos Aires meeting, electronic communication (both the Internet and electronic mail) offers three advantages. First, it facilitates the exchange of experiences between Working Group Members outside the forum of our annual meetings. Second, it allows Working Group Members to transmit responses to draft documents more quickly than with the existing channels of mail or fax. And third, it lowers the costs of sharing key drafts and other papers. Because of these benefits, at Buenos Aires we invited Members to increase their use of electronic mail to exchange comments and documents with the secretariat. Since then, we have noticed a significant increase in the use made by Members of electronic mail, and this has indeed brought benefits in terms of greater speed and reliability.

Recommendations

8 We would like to increase further the usefulness of the website to Working Group Members and we welcome any suggestions that Members may have about further changes or additions we could make to the website to make it easier to use. And we recommend:

addition of more links to other relevant websites. At present, the website includes a link to the main INTOSAI website (www.intosai.org). We could also add direct links to the websites of Working Group members, of other INTOSAI working groups and INTOSAI regional groupings such as OLACEFS, and links to international organisations such as the OECD (who are currently doing work in the area of regulatory reform and whose website has many relevant papers, especially on economic regulation). If the Working Group are content, the secretariat will contact the INTOSAI General Secretariat and the secretariats of regional groupings, committees and working groups to give effect to this. Working Group members may wish to suggest further links.

inclusion of electronic mail addresses for each member on the website itself, to facilitate exchange of experiences between Members. At the Buenos Aires meeting, we collected e-mail addresses from attendees, some of which may need updating. The list of e-mail addresses collected at Buenos Aires is attached as Annex A to this paper.

Points for Discussion

9 There are three points for the Working Group to discuss:

Does the Working Group accept the recommendations at paragraph 7?

Can members suggest links to other relevant websites that would enhance the Working Group’s own website, or any other changes that would improve the overall usefulness of the website?

Is the list of e-mail addresses attached up-to-date and complete?

April 2001

Annex A

Name	E-mail address	SAI/Country
F. Fragoso	ffragoso@agn.gov.ar	Argentina
A. Folica	afolica@agn.gov.ar	Argentina
J. Casavelos	casavelos@agn.gov.ar	Argentina
W. Raschendorfer	raschendorfer@rechnungshof.gov.at	Austria
G. Nickolov	nao_pres@otel.net	Bulgaria
M. Garrido	mgarrido@contraloria.ch	Chile
B. Hejduk	bohdan.hejduk@nku.cz	Czech Republic
M. Leixner	miroslav.leixner@nku.cz	Czech Republic
I. Danrud	inger.danrud@rigrevisionen.dk	Denmark
E.D. Sorensen	erik.dorph@rigsrevisionen.dk	Denmark
Dr. A. Kovacs	kovacsa@asz.gov.hu	Hungary
E. Kemeny	kemenye@asz.gov.hu	Hungary
HP Das	hpd@agcr.delhi.nic.in	India
P.E. Astad	per-egil.astad@riksrevisjonen.no	Norway
J. Jansen	jorgen.jansen@riksrevisjonen.no	Norway
B. Dárdono de Kanonikoff	karnodar@conexion.com.py	Paraguay
P. Cecilia Martinez Ramira	Paula1cecilia@usa.net	Peru
J. Uczkiewicz	jacek_uczkiewicz@nik.gov.pl	Poland
E. Sikorska	elzbieta_sikorska@nik.gov.pl	Poland
J. Bourn	Email Sir John Bourn, Jeremy Colman or Ed Humpherson through the National Audit Office enquiries desk, please mark your email for their attention.	UK
J. Colman		UK
E. Humpherson		UK
S. Sienra	sesienra@adinet.com.uy	Uruguay

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INTOSAI Working Group on the Audit of Privatisation

Papers for the Eighth Meeting Budapest, 11 and 12 June 2001

USING THE WORKING GROUP'S WEBSITE (www.nao.gov.uk/intosai/wgap)

Note by the Chairman

Papers for the Eighth Meeting
Budapest, 11 and 12 June 2001