Functions and Roles of Internal Audit in Public Sector Risk Management: A Study on Gambia

Business Research Method
1.3. Relevant experience:
My job as an assistant internal auditor is to assist the Senior internal Auditor in the National
Assembly to evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of control in responding to risks within
the organization’s governance, operations and information system regarding the reliability
and integrity of financial and operational information, efficiency and effectiveness of
operations and programmes safe guarding of assets and compliance with laws regulations
policies, procedures and contracts by pre auditing of payments of the National Assembly and
other activities captured in our annual risk base plan since January 2018 to Date.

Internal Audit Functions in the
Public Sector Risk Management

Table of Contents
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................4
Literature review.................................................................................................................................7
Explain the function and role that is being played to minimize risk by doing internal audit in the
Gambia..............................................................................................................................................7
Research methodology......................................................................................................................12
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................16
References..........................................................................................................................................17

Introduction
Internal audit is a business process that is used by the organization to increase its
efficiency or to add value. It is an activity of assurance and consulting. This activity helps the
organisation to achieve its goal. Internal audit is a systematic approach that helps in risk
management by improving the effectiveness. This is used by the organisation so that a proper
account can be maintained by the business and the upper body and the government uses this
to make adecision. Public sector businesses are those organisations which is controlled and
run by the national, state or any local legal body of the country. In this sector the major
shareholder of the enterprise is the government body (Kagermann, Kinney and Küting, 2021).
In recent years, the Government of the Gambia has made significant progress in
strengthening fiscal discipline and improving the efficiency of its Public Financial
Management System (PFM). The Government has strengthened the legislative base,
increased the transparency of budget information, improved control over expenditures, and
strengthened budget oversight. At the heart of these initiatives was the establishment of the
Internal Audit Directorate through an Act of Parliament the (Public Financial Act 2014) and
its accompanying Financial Regulations 2016.
Background of the research problem:
Many organisations are hastily presumptuous about the complexity that are arising
while maintaining and managing the internal audit function. Here a wide range of control is
required so that the goals can be achieved effectively.Even with the existence of internal
audit in the public sector, it is still found that the rate of frauds is still rising.In the views of
some they are thinking that internalaudit is creating more problem and making the accounting
complex rather than solving the issues(Alaraji, 2020). The problem that arises in internal
audit of public sector are lack of management responses to internal audit findings, lack of
assigning the proper duties and responsibilities to the auditors, inadequacy in maintaining the
routine audits, lack of internal audit control within the public sector. These are some of the
reasons that are affecting the effectiveness of the audit internally in public sector. So, this
motivated the researcher to undertake a study on this topic so that views can be given to solve
those challenges.