Challenges on the road to better cost-effectiveness and the consequences of insufficient governance are the predominant themes of the Swiss Federal Audit Office’s 2024 annual report. They can damage financial prosperity and the public’s trust in Swiss institutions. The annual report presents the findings from selected audits and contains key figures on Switzerland’s supreme financial audit body.
Recommendations on savings are hard to enforce: “Implementation is difficult”, explains Pascal Stirnimann, SFAO Director. Implementation is delayed or recommendations are rejected. To name two examples from the 160 audits performed last year where there is the potential for savings: With regard to the granting of subsidies for the building programme, the SFAO identified high deadweight effects and insufficient impact – savings of half a billion Swiss francs would have been possible. And in the ETH Domain, savings potential was not exploited in research procurements and a construction project.
The relevance of governance and compliance is another topic that many of the audit findings for 2024 have in common: Three audits at RUAG MRO Holding AG, for instance, showed that good governance and compliance not only needs to be described, but also put into practice in order to prevent and uncover damage. And in the case of a new production platform for geodata, the SFAO requested that the project management clarify the concrete benefits of an investment of CHF 22 million before such funding is released.
The report also contains the SFAO’s vision with regard to its new strategy, as well as key figures on the supreme financial audit body and its other tasks. Last year, 375 whistleblowing investigations were opened (2023: 372).
Political financing: Not part of the SFAO’s core tasks
Looking back at the past year, with 12 popular votes and the first publication of party financing, the SFAO notes an improvement in transparency, although this is not absolute. It has identified a need for amendments to the legal basis, and views its own role over the long term as being in conflict with the independence and credibility of a supreme financial audit body: The SFAO must not be involved in enforcement, but instead should monitor enforcement. Maintaining an electronic reporting register is, by its very nature, an enforcement and chancellery task, and is therefore to be rejected.