Services

The Office has three areas:

Financial statement audit
Projects:
- Performance audit
- Information technology (IT) audit
- Investigations
- Other projects
Corporate and administrative services.

Financial statement audits

Financial statement audits are examinations, by independent external auditors, of information that presents the financial position and performance of an organization at a point in time. Our financial statement audits are performed using Canadian Auditing Standards. We engage audit firms, at times, to act as our agents in conducting these audits.

We perform financial statement audits and related assurance engagements, such as audits of public sector compensation disclosures and other financial information presented for audit by our auditees.

We perform the audit of the Public Accounts of Manitoba which includes the consolidated Summary Financial Statements of the Province of Manitoba (the Province). Both The Financial Administration Act and The Auditor General Act, require the Auditor General to audit the Province’s Public Accounts. Under our Act, the Auditor General is also responsible for examining and auditing all public money, unless an Act indicates otherwise.

We are involved in the audits of all entities in the Government Reporting Entity to varying degrees as part of our audit of the Summary Financial Statements of the Public Accounts. The Government Reporting Entity includes all funds, organizations, and business enterprises controlled by the government (for example, school divisions, universities, regional health authorities, Manitoba Hydro, and Manitoba Public Insurance).

Projects

Projects contribute to a public service that is effective and a government that is accountable to the Legislative Assembly and to Manitobans.

We do four main types of projects:

Performance audits
Information technology (IT) audits
Investigations
Other projects

Performance audits

Performance audits are systematic assessments of how well a government entity, program, or function is managing its activities, responsibilities, and resources. Performance audits are planned, performed, and reported in accordance with Canadian Standards on Assurance Engagements and Office policies.

The audits may examine the government’s management practices, controls, and reporting systems based on its own public administration policies and on best practices.Specifically, we may audit:

Operations of government organizations (see Section 14 of The Auditor General Act (the Act)).
Use of public money by recipients of public money (see Section 15 of the Act).

A performance audit involves:

Establishing an audit objective which is normally based on the question the audit is expected to answer about the performance of an activity or program.
Determining suitable criteria to help the auditor assess whether the audit objective is met.
Gathering information to assess performance against the criteria.
Concluding against the established objective.
Reporting both positive and negative findings.
Making recommendations for improvement when performance is assessed as being significantly different from the criteria.

Information technology (IT) audit

IT audits are a specific type of performance audit. See the performance audit section above for more information about how these audits are planned and performed and the legislative reporting requirements for these audits.

We perform IT audits in high-risk areas such as IT governance, cybersecurity, project management, systems development and changes, and IT continuity. We apply generally accepted frameworks and standards as audit criteria, including the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT) framework, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards, and Center for Internet Security (CIS) controls.