ALRAQABA . ISSUE 15
27
• How to maintain governance of operations
and tighten control over the public sector to
fight corruption, and what mechanism to be
used in preparing effective policies during
times of crises.
Efforts of the National Audit Office of Bahrain
The National Audit Office of the Kingdom of
Bahrain (NAO) has undertaken practical and
exceptional precautions in order to ensure the
safety of its staff and protect them from being
exposed to the virus. NAO has also set and
embraced a number of technical and logistic
solutions and approaches to ensure the continuity
of business and proper implementation of the
tasks within the SAI. Those efforts are reflected in
the following:
• Virtual meetings were held, chaired by the
President of the NAO, on the measures
and regulations to be taken to ensure the
continuity of business and avoid the outbreak
of the Coronavirus. Such regulations are to
be regularly updated in accordance with
the recorded developments relating to the
outbreak of the Coronavirus and the cases
detected in Bahrain. NAO has set out a
policy for remote working and a business
continuity plan. It has also provided its staff
with all the devices and technical programs
needed to implement such policy and ensure
the continuity of business within the SAI. In
addition, the SAI has prepared and adopted
a guide for remote working and decided to
conduct training events and meetings virtually
to ensure the safety of its staff. All employees
of NAO are obliged to wear face masks and
maintain social distancing. Regular awareness
newsletters are sent to the staff, stressing the
need to adhere to the health precautions and
highlighting the risk of COVID19- outbreak
defined by the Bahraini health authorities.
Instead of using a shared biometric fingerprint
scanner, the employees are required to clock
in and out by scanning their individual work
IDs. The NAO is also keen to sanitize the
building on a regular basis and ensure the
provision of antiseptics, sanitizers, and face
masks for all employees. For the safety of
the staff, the number of hospitality workers
has been reduced, and only a limited
number of suppliers are allowed to enter the
NAO building.
• Under the technical and logistic solutions
embraced by the NAO to ensure business
continuity and the conduct of tasks, all
regulatory and audit tasks have been
assessed, and a plan was set up together with
exceptional regulations for each phase of the
process. This gesture was taken to ensure
a comprehensive and timely completion of
such tasks. Besides, a monthly report is
prepared to assess the work progress of
the undertaken audit tasks in line with the
defined plan. Other efforts of NAO in this
domain include the adoption of technical
solutions, such as VPN technology, as well
as the software and applications used for
holding virtual conferences. Meetings are
usually held, whether among the SAI staff
themselves or with the concerned parties
at the entities subject to the audit of NAO,
using Zoom or MS Teams. The NAO has also
adopted an electronic approach in auditing
the documents, paper works, audit reports,
and final statements by sending messages
via the email address of the SAI employee.
Using VPN technology, the administrative and
technical staff of NAO can access the work
systems anywhere in order to carry out their
duties remotely.
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