The purpose of the project is to disseminate best practices for auditing procedures, improving knowledge of this complex area of work and ensuring consistent and high implementation standards across the Union. The training is aimed to assist in developing a consistent approach across the Member States and in providing assurances that the audit findings in different reports are of comparable value.

The programme will be implemented in 2 phases, each of 10 training sessions*, of which:

COURSE 1: Setting-up and implementation of an audit system and basics for performing a detailed audit

• 4 training sessions
• Addressed to officials of the EU Member States, Candidate Countries, EEA/EFTA countries, Potential Candidate, Eastern neighbouring and Mediterranean basin countries, and selected non-EU countries. The training is open to persons involved in such audits as either auditors or technical experts seconded to audit teams to provide technical expertise to the audit team.

COURSE 2: Developing advanced skills to conduct a detailed audit to verify the effective and suitable implementation of official controls by the relevant control authorities

• 6 training sessions
• Addressed to staff of competent authorities of the EU Member States and Candidate Countries involved in official control activities under the NAS and with a working experience of minimum 2 years in the functional area of NAS.

*Number of sessions may be modified following outbreak of COVID-19 pandemics.

COURSE 1: Setting-up and implementation of an audit system and basics for performing a detailed audit

• What is an Audit, auditing principles, audit types and auditing bodies
• Audits at EU Level. Main findings and recommendations from DG SANTE audits of NAS in MS.
• EU Legal Framework, NAS Reference Documents and International Standards.
• Organization of internal audit systems;
• Fundamental Process of audit under ISO 19011/ 2011. IIA standard and approach
• Setting up an Internal Audit Function – Organizational requirements – Nature of Audit Process
• Risk Based Audit Programming
• Implementation of Audit Process
  • Compliance with planned arrangements
  • Effective implementation, Suitability to achieve objectives
  • Audit Reporting and Follow-up; Audit Review and Dissemination of Best Practice
  • Audit Resources, Auditor Competence
• Measuring the effectiveness of official controls

COURSE 2: Developing advanced skills to conduct a detailed audit to verify the effective and suitable implementation of official controls by the relevant control authorities

• Audits at EU Level. Main findings and recommendations from DG SANTE audits of NAS in MS
• EU Legal Framework, NAS Reference Documents and International Standards
• Review of Audit Process and organization of the Audit System
• Risk Based Audit Programming
• Independence and Independent Scrutiny of the Audit Process
• Measuring the effectiveness of official controls
• Compliance with planned arrangements and suitability to achieve objectives
• Evidence based Findings, Audit Evidence
• Root-cause analysis, methods of root- cause analysis, usefulness and applicability to audit
• Conclusions and recommendations
• Audit Reporting & Dissemination
• Audit Management and Review
  • PDCA benefits to continuous improvement of the audit system
  • How can the NAS respond to crisis along the food chain

Target participants

The project will aim at raising awareness and at improving the understanding of how to set up and implement a National Audit System (NAS) for auditing of official controls within Competent Authorities. This training is specifically aimed with officials who are directly involved in auditing of official controls under the NAS. This includes both auditors and technical experts seconded to the audit team to provide expertise to the audit team.

Dissemination

The BTSF programme is based on the “train the trainers” approach, and for this reason dissemination of the received knowledge is fundamental for the trainings to have a greater impact.

Participants will be requested to commit themselves to disseminate the information received via different methods, i.e. informing colleagues about the information received at the training, distributing the training materials, preparing informative articles in the professional national or, if possible, in international journals, preparing presentations based on the training materials for the staff of national Competent Authorities or other disseminating methods which could be appropriate to share the information received via the BTSF training. During the course participants will be provided with a training package to be used as supporting dissemination material.