A student of mine has joined AGO

Recently I received an email from a student with this type of address ie. @ago.gov.sg.


Curious, I ask him as to which branch of government is she working for now.


"Auditor-General Office," she said. [I thought it was the Attorney General Office. :)]


She is helping AGO to fufill its role to audit all ministries, statutory boards, embassies, and Temasek owned complanies for President. [Wow!]


That conversation brought my attention to the recent article in BT dated Jul 20, 2007 entitled, "Govt audit reveals financial lapses".


Examples of financial lapses revealed by Auditor-General are:-

• The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) could have better managed over $200 million in cash reserves for higher returns. [..from zero return?]


• National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) had accumulated unused grants of $4.9 million in March 2006. [So again money is sitting idly around.]


• Ministry of Health (MOH) was found to have continued its payments for some 106 deceased persons through a scheme was administered by an agent. It has recovered some $55,850 of the $178,150 that was paid. [Phew! Amount not big.]

My Words

• Thank goodness we have a Government who is willing to be transparent about their own boo-boos.


• Thank goodness we have a good problem of dealing with money sitting around to the tune of millions of dollars. It shows that we have some hidden reserves ie. like housewives putting away money.


• Thank goodness we did NOT find massive frauds.


• It is good that we have taken stock of the problems. We will remedy them and move on.