With audit of government accounts underway in a fully digital format from this fiscal, the government auditor is now leaving no stone unturned in making its field auditors “future ready”, especially for audit in an AI world, the CAG Girish Chandra Murmu said on Tuesday.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) is in talks with the UPSC and DoPT to change the recruitment rules of its field level officers so as to stipulate “IT proficiency” as a priority in their recruitment eligibility criteria, Murmu said at a press conference at the end of SAI20 Summit in Goa.

He was responding to a question on whether CAG was ready with the skills to meet the next level of AI challenges and what are the preparations being undertaken to be a “future ready” government auditor.

Proposed changes

Murmu said that he was taking up the proposal of changes in recruitment rules with DoPT and UPSC. “We need the concurrence of UPSC. It will be a formality”, he said.

He highlighted that CAG — which has about 41,000 personnel — already has trained people at the highest level, but need to have the “cutting edge” technology skills of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for its field level auditors and accountants. 

While it may not spend energies on comprehensive AI skilling of its existing staff, CAG is certainly looking to only onboard those with good “IT proficiency” as part of its new hires. 

Murmu highlighted that the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS) officers get selected through the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC).

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“UPSC characteristics have changed in last three decades. More than half the people now are engineers. More than 80-90 per cent are professionals”, Murmu said.

Upgrading skills

Murmu said that CAG is not only looking to introduce “cutting edge” skills for its field level auditors and accountants, but is also upgrading the current IT infrastructure that it has been functioning under across the country.

He also highlighted the introduction of digital audit of government accounts from this fiscal would improve “audit accuracy”.

Murmu, who is the Chair of the Supreme Audit Institutions-20 (SAI20) Engagement Group under the India’s G20 Presidency, had at the SAI20 Summit (final meeting at the level of Heads of SAIs) underscored the need for incorporation of AI in auditing and audit of AI frameworks. 

He had in his opening remarks on Monday emphasised that Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) must inevitably prepare themselves for auditing AI based governance systems and SAIs must look for opportunities to adopt AI into their audit techniques to increase their effectiveness.

At the press conference on Tuesday, Murmu acknowledged that India is not so technologically advanced on audit of AI. “Whatever AI is coming, we don’t know how we can audit it. But whatever IT systems the government has adopted, we are auditing it directly like the GSTN (GST Network) — how efficiently it is working and what are its shortfalls etc”, Murmu said.

Murmu said that Indians are willy-nilly using some kind of machine learning. There is lot of data and analytics. “Some kind of Artificial Intelligence is already there. Our AIs are very secure… We can vouch for their audit integrity as whatever data is collected is audited data”, he added.

(This correspondent is at Panaji at the invitation of CAG for SAI20 Summit)

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