APIPA 2009 Completed in Guam

4 October 2009 Posted by Jason

Click Here to View theOriginal APIPA 2009 Website

http://apipa2009.pitiviti.org

The Association of Pacific Island Public Auditors (APIPA) held its 20^th annual conference on Guam July 27-31, 2009. The conference was hosted by Guam’s Office of the Public Auditor (OPA). The Graduate School provided training and logistical support to the conference through its Pacific Islands Training Initiative (PITI) program, giving conference participants the opportunity to receive up to 38 hours of continuing education units (CEUs). All courses were held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Participants

Three hundred and twenty-three (323) participants attended the 2009 APIPA conference, up from 200 who attended last year’s conference on Saipan and 111 who attended the 2007 APIPA Conference in American Samoa. Attendance in 2007 was lower than in most recent years primarily because of the greater difficulty and expense of traveling to American Samoa for most potential participants.

Participants came from throughout the Pacific, including American Samoa, Chuuk, CNMI, Fiji, Guam, Kiribati, Kosrae, Marshall Islands, Palau, Pohnpei, Tuvalu and Yap. In all, 2,255 course certificates were awarded for a total of 11,212 CEUs earned.

Instructors and Courses

Seven instructors led the training sessions: Frank Crawford, Marion Higa, Robert Knox, Bob Lavigna, Steven Morgan, Mary Beth Saenz and Jeanne Yamamura. Twenty-two (22) courses were provided during the conference in four training tracks: Audit, Audit Supervisory, Basic Finance and Advanced Finance. The instructors, course titles and number of participants attending each course are shown in the following table:

Instructor	Course Title	Number of Students
Morgan	Emerging Issues in Governmental Audit Standards	51
Saenz	Critical Thinking Skills for Auditors	38
Crawford	Government Accounting Standards Update	134
Yamamura	Weathering the Financial Storm	83
Yamamura	Evaluating Financial Performance	83
Higa	Maintaining Ethics and Accountability in Government	301
Yamamura	Statistical Sampling for Auditors	54
Morgan	Auditing Performance Management Systems	23
Crawford	Common Single Audit Findings in the Islands	124
Saenz	Federal Grants Financial Management Compliance	100
Saenz	Effective Audit Report Writing	36
Higa	Getting an Audit from Project Initiation Out the Door: Internal Controls & Tips for Ourselves	36
Knox	Protecting Your Procurement Dollars from Fraud, Waste, and Abuse	121
Crawford	How to Read Financial Statements and Disclosures	105
Morgan	Risk-Based Performance Audits Project Planning	47
Lavigna	Meeting the Challenge: Attracting and Retaining a World-Class Work Force	19
Crawford	Single Audit and A-133: A Case Study	111
Crawford	Government Performeter Update	111
Knox	Procurement and Financial Assistance – Understanding the Risks Associated with Utilizing ARRA Stimulus Funds	114
Crawford	Fraud in Government	107
Morgan	Implementing Performance-Based Management and Budgeting	181
Lavigna	Building and Maintaining a Strong Workforce in Tough Times	276
	Total Number of Certificates Awarded:	2,255

APIPA Executive Meeting

An APIPA Executive Meeting was held in the afternoon of July 28^th. Attendees included all the principals or their proxies from the various Pacific audit offices, other key OPA staff, Guam OPA staff, representatives of PASAI (including Hayden Everett from the Asian Development Bank), and PITI Program Managers Stephen Latimer and Jason Aubuchon. While the complete minutes from that meeting will be made available through the APIPA secretariat, a few issues discussed at the meeting are worth mentioning:

Latimer and Aubuchon provided an overview of PITI-sponsored regional initiatives including the audit and finance office assessment projects and the Executive Leadership Development Project (ELDP).
The tentative date for the 2010 APIPA Conference to be held on Pohnpei was not determined.

Notes and Observations

The APIPA website (http://apipa2009.org) was a key tool for planning, organizing and administering the conference. Complete course schedules were offered on the website, as well as online conference registration, course descriptions, and background information on the instructors.

The staff of the Guam Office of the Public Auditor devoted many hours of work to make the conference a success. Their efforts are greatly appreciated. Special thanks also to the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs for funding the training element of the program via the Pacific Islands Training Initiative (PITI).