It has been more than two years since he retired from government service. As he has spent nearly four and a half decades of energy in the state agencies, his interest and curiosity about the functioning of government agencies has not diminished. From time to time I have been giving suggestions/advice on current affairs through public media through articles/compositions.

As the Office of the Auditor General is the office where I worked and performed my responsibilities during the last period of my government service, there is more interest and curiosity about its work than elsewhere. 

today June 15 . It is also the 67th anniversary day of the Office of the Auditor General . On this occasion, I express my best wishes to all the employees of the Auditor General's Office and to all those who have faith, trust and confidence in this institution . Also, I hope that this organization can make a significant contribution in maintaining financial discipline and promoting financial governance by controlling the irregularities and irregularities in the public administration of the country . In this article, I have included the experience of the Auditor General's office and some suggestions related to it. Hopefully, the attention of the relevant bodies will be taken care of.

I held the responsibility of Auditor General for 6 years from 2074 June 8 to 2080 June 7. When I took this responsibility, I published a six-year action plan to complete 110 activities and in the last year, when I evaluated the implementation situation, 85 completed and seventeen partially completed, more than ninety percent of the work has been done . Eight activities did not make significant progress. Among the works included in the action plan and which have been ongoing since the past, the construction of office buildings, physical infrastructure arrangements, organizational structure, additional manpower management, initiation of electronic audit system, legal and policy reforms in audit and reporting system are noteworthy.  Based on

risk, using on-site and remote audit system, the audit process and results were communicated to the public through interactions, discussions, press releases, bulletins and media regularly. As a result of the audit, some large cases of irregularities and corruption within the state system have also been publicized and some of them have been further investigated and acted upon by the investigative bodies. 

Nepal's Supreme Audit Institution has a good representation and presence in the international arena as well. Nepal has been elected as a member of the governing board of the International Association of Asian Supreme Audit Institutions (ASSOCI) for two terms and is also showing a good presence in the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). Agreements have been reached between the Supreme Audit Institutions of different countries to exchange cooperation. Auditor Generals of different countries including neighboring countries come on formal and informal visits. The presence of the Auditor General has succeeded in coming into public view . Continuation of national and international activities and visits of heads of counterpart organizations should be given importance. According to the action plan, implementation and regular evaluation will lead to institutional strengthening. However, despite some improvements in the internal management of the Office of the Auditor General through these efforts, the overall financial discipline of the country could not be relatively improved. 

A lot of improvements and more significant work could have been done through the Office of the Auditor General . For about three years, the activity of all government agencies has decreased due to the epidemic of Covid-19 and the working environment has shrunk. Even though the work of many government agencies was affected, apart from some delay in submitting the annual report, adopting the process of working from home through electronic means did not allow any fundamental impact on the regular work . The annual report is usually submitted by the end of March. Despite the delay of a few months due to the Covid-19, the latest report managed to meet the deadline of mid-March. After the submission of the Auditor General's report, the reports of the House of Representatives and the provinces are pending discussion in the Public Accounts Committee of the Provincial Assembly for a long time. When there is a delay in submitting the report, presenting it to the Parliament and discussing it in the Public Accounts Committee, the relevance of some topics ends. It should be presented and discussed in the Parliament in due time and decided. An appropriate mechanism for the implementation, monitoring and control of local level reports should be made.

Although the list of irregularities in the number of thousands is published every year in the Auditor General's report, it has not been able to draw the attention of the Parliament and the parliamentary committees except for a few big 'cases'. The matters mentioned in the Auditor General's report are not submitted only for the purpose of perjury. It is also a document with the opinion of the constitutional body presented by depicting the state of financial governance of the country, government management, economy, public administration, progress of development and accountability of responsible officials. Until now, 62 annual reports of the Auditor General have been submitted, but despite the theoretical, policy and legal reforms in financial administration, there is still a problem at the implementation level. The practices pointed out in the report should be corrected, amended and modified so that irregularities do not repeat in the future. The Auditor General's report should be discussed in detail in the House of Representatives. Parliament should play a leading role in maintaining financial governance.

The organization structure, manpower, audit quality and transparency of the Auditor General's office are frequently discussed. After the government form of the country was transformed into federalism, in the first years of the implementation of federalism, there was a demand for the provincial independent General Accounts Commission. Based on the expansion of the working area to the local level, there should be a structure at the state level and if possible down to the level. On this basis, the structure has been approved by the Government of Nepal and according to it, about 200 different levels of posts have been established and the posts have been filled and the employees have been promoted, but so far the office has not been established at the provincial level. At present, attempts have been made to establish a contact office of the Auditor General. It is appropriate to have a provincial office at the provincial level and below that a contact office if needed. As an alternative, if a radical change is to be made, arrangements can be made for the Comptroller General and Auditor in India and other countries.

There are frequent discussions about the management, capacity development, conduct and behavior of the staff of the Auditor General's office. According to the Constitution of Nepal, the Auditor General has his own assistant staff. In the past, the operation of the Nepal Audit Service was done by the Auditor General's office. Currently, the operation of the staff of this service is done by the government of Nepal. According to such arrangement, the auditor general has no right to legally make the employees accountable to the organization and to award and punish them . This topic has been discussed and debated for many years. It is necessary to have provisions in the Civil Service Act and Regulations so that the staff of the Auditor General's office will be operated from the same office. 

Government audit work requires knowledge and skills in a multifaceted field. There is a majority of employees with financial knowledge in the General Accounting Office. The employees working there require superior knowledge and skills than other professions . Those who have been employed for a long period of time and have developed sufficient skills . Even though there is a talent for finding mistakes and errors through auditing, there are widespread complaints of non-uniformity in the same matter. In order to improve this, capacity and skill development, incentive system and respect for working in the Supreme Audit Institution should be created to attract to this service. 

When the parliamentary committee and the public debate and argue, there are more comments about the personal behavior of the staff of the General Account than about the problems and solutions of the economic and financial administration . It is not appropriate to repeatedly question the activities of the country's highest auditing organization and the professional conduct and behavior of government auditors. This has damaged the credibility and public image of the organization. Parliament, officials of government agencies and Auditor General should seriously discuss this and find a long-term solution . Especially since more complaints are heard in the audit of the local level, more monitoring should be focused on that. In the

audit, different examiners, even of the same subject, raise questions and questions about the quality, including non-uniformity. The Auditor General's report should be based on truth and reality as it shows facts, discusses, criticizes and gives a report with opinions. The report is the basis for checking the impartiality and competence of the Auditor General. Must be able to respond to public questions about any of the issues raised in the report. In order to keep the institutional memory of the constitutional body alive, it is necessary to put an end to the system of appointing the Auditor General before the position is vacant and to end the system of acting for a long period of time. 

A lot of work can be done in the Auditor General's office if there is cooperation and solidarity from the related parties and a comfortable working environment. Officials of public bodies do not understand that the Auditor General is more active and visible. For the expected success, coordination with the government, public bodies and their officials, parliament and parliamentary committees and the cooperation of their own office staff is necessary. Due to the practice of all the agencies talking positively about coordination and cooperation but not putting it into practice, confusion and irregularity have increased unnecessarily. The reason why the issue of regularization seems to be twice as much as that of collection is due to the lack of coordination between the public bodies and the Auditor General's office . It is necessary to have a special initiative from both sides. 

Most of the world's auditor general and government agencies have some kind of conflict. After the irregularities at the local level were widely exposed in the early years of the implementation of federalism, some local political leaders even accused the staff of the General Accounting Office of being agents appointed by the center against federalism. It also came to light that the work of the Accountant General is only responsible for collecting bills, settling documents and accounts, and not being interested in the government's policies, programs, plans, and revenue expenditure. There was an attempt to shrink the functional autonomy of the organization by reducing the authority through laws. In order to prevent abuse and waste of government property, there is no restriction on any subject to be tested by the criteria of regularity, frugality, efficiency, effectiveness and propriety provided by the constitution. You should be able to face such challenges . If there is any problem in federalism, it is not because of the General Account . Federalism will be strengthened if the appropriate suggestions shown by the Office of the Auditor General are followed. 

For the Auditor General to be effective, support and patronage should be provided by Parliament and Parliamentary Committees. In many countries, the Auditor General is considered an official of the Parliament. The Auditor General is a body accountable to Parliament under the Constitution. If support is not available from the Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee, its effectiveness will naturally decrease . As an example of the past, in the year 2079, when the directive was issued by the Public Accounts Committee, "No undue audit by the Auditor General", the federal government could not be audited for three years . It kept increasing the number of government beruju and could not reduce it. However, this exercise could not last for many days . Recently, the law has been amended through an ordinance and the previous arrangement has been established . There should be an atmosphere of trust between the Parliament, the Public Accounts Committee and the Auditor General. The effect of the Auditor General's report should be to maintain financial discipline in public administration and increase efficiency in public service. The effectiveness of government audits requires widespread public acceptance of the Office of the Auditor General and government auditors.

Mahalekha has become a beautiful building. As soon as you enter the premises of the building, one of the famous philosopher Chanakya's tricks 'Ath Arthanushasanam' was written in large letters on the island, visible from a distance. This trick means that we should now talk about the discipline of artha . This tactic was written to inspire the beauty of the building to add purity of sentiment and thought to the government official. From the past, it was a practice to have a picture of the office building on the front page of the annual report . A sketch of this building was made and given to the Honorable President as a token of remembrance on the occasion of the anniversary. This audit building has also become the public identity of the Auditor General's office. Now some more physical infrastructure and manpower, working system, policies and laws will be updated in that organization. The Auditor General and staff have the commitment and courage to deal with the internal and external anomalies seen in the country's financial administration. Must be able to show . This will increase the effectiveness and credibility of the Auditor General and the office.