The Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) of Mexico, the Superior Audit of the Federation (Auditoría Superior de la Federación, or ASF), recognises the critical role that data and analytics can play in the fulfilment of its mandate and achievement of strategic goals. Within the ASF, its digital transformation work programme emphasises ASF-wide goals and objectives for equipping auditors with the infrastructure, architecture, skills and tools needed to effectively audit in a digital environment. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for this programme so that auditors have the necessary infrastructure and tools to audit remotely.
Data-driven risk detection and analytics for identifying corruption, fraud, waste and abuse (i.e. integrity risks), are critical elements of the ASF’s strategy and activities for digital transformation. Taking advantage of data and analytics for identifying and assessing integrity risks does not typically occur in isolation from other data governance or analytics initiatives. For instance, improving data pre-processing for analysing fraud risks can have implications for data management policies and activities in other areas of the ASF’s work, such as conducting performance audits. As a result, the report offers a range of proposals for the ASF to enhance its data governance and embed analytics into its strategic initiatives, drawing from good practices of other SAIs and accountability actors.
At the ASF, analytics and data governance are decentralised and split across multiple teams. For instance, the Special Audit of Financial Compliance (Auditoría Especial de Cumplimiento Financiero, AECF) and the Special Audit of Federal Spending (Auditoría Especial del Gasto Federalizado, AEGF) have developed their own unique initiatives, processes and capacities for analytics. This report also identifies operational priorities for the ASF to build its analytics capacity, particularly with regards to the integrity context, through improved co-ordination, digital skills development, and nurturing a data-centric culture. The review does not provide an exhaustive discussion of all of the ASF’s applications of and capacity for leveraging analytics, or of the numerous ways auditors use data to support their work. The primary objective of the collaboration between the OECD and the ASF was to focus on data and analytics for integrity risk detection and the activities of the key teams working in this area, as identified by the ASF itself.