Audit Wales COVID-19 Real-Time Learning

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, audit institutions worldwide faced a fundamental question: should they wait until the crisis had passed to conduct traditional retrospective audits, or should they find ways to provide useful oversight and learning in real time? Audit Wales chose the latter path, developing an innovative real-time learning project that provided timely insights to Welsh public bodies while the pandemic was still unfolding. This approach represented a significant departure from conventional audit practice and offers valuable lessons for how audit institutions can respond to future crises.

The real-time learning project was designed around several key principles. First, it prioritised learning over judgment, recognising that public bodies were operating in unprecedented circumstances where mistakes were inevitable and the most valuable contribution audit could make was to help organisations learn and adapt quickly. Second, it emphasised timeliness, producing short, focused outputs within weeks rather than the months-long timelines typical of traditional audit reports. Third, it adopted a collaborative approach, engaging with audited bodies as learning partners rather than subjects of examination, sharing emerging findings and good practices as they were identified.

Audit Wales conducted rapid reviews across multiple public bodies simultaneously, examining how they were adapting governance arrangements, managing financial pressures, maintaining service delivery, and supporting staff well-being during the pandemic. By looking across multiple organisations at the same time, the audit team was able to identify common challenges, share solutions that were working in some organisations with others facing similar difficulties, and build a comprehensive picture of the Welsh public sector's crisis response that would not have been visible from individual organisation-level audits alone.

The project produced a series of short, accessible publications throughout the pandemic that were widely used by public bodies, Welsh Government, and the Senedd. The real-time learning approach has since been recognised internationally as a model for crisis-period auditing, and Audit Wales has shared its methodology and lessons through the OECD Auditors Alliance and other international forums.