Elita Krūmiņa presented her vision of the future to the Office with the President. Both officials also discussed the current achievements of the SAO. The outgoing head of the Office underlined that she had always put results first as a manager and these eight years at the helm of the organisation have been quite demanding and challenging. During this time SAO conducted a comprehensive internal audit, which led to new organisational strategy and training programme for enhancement of professional knowledge of the staff.
President Levits shared his views on how he sees Office providing broader consultancy to government institutions and bodies in future on top of audits it is already conducting, sharing its expert views and best practice advice on how to meet good governance standards and implement structural reforms in public administration. Egils Levits pointed out that education and health sectors, which are currently going through the process of reforms, would benefit from such support allowing different government departments see where their reform actions sit within the overall reform plans and how to roll out intended changes according to good governance principles.
President of Latvia praised SAO for international representation of Latvia and sharing its experience with counterparts in other countries. He wished SAO to keep up the good job in future: ‘Latvia’s experience will continue to be useful to many other countries that are looking for ways to set this straight, and I think SAO must continue its active international presence in future’. Discussion then moved on to factors that enabled SAO to shift to remote-work mode so quickly after the outbreak of COVID-19 and how other countries have followed the example of the State Audit Office of Latvia.
