Just in Time Auditing and Risk Management in the Context of COVID-19: The ICMBio experience

Abstract

Pursuant to the Normative Instruction of the Federal Secretariat for Internal Control nº 9/2018, internal auditing units (Audin) must prepare their Annual Internal Auditing Plan (PAINT) considering the significant risks to which the audited unit is exposed. The Normative also regulates that the submission of PAINT, to the Controladoria-Geral da União, must occur until the last workday of October of the preceding exercise of its execution. Thereby, the Audin define which tasks will be realized considering the reality of their organization in the preceding exercise of their execution. The World Health Organization declaration, in March of 2020, of the coronavirus outbreak as a global pandemic, radically transformed the reality of organizations. Given this particular and challenging scenario, public managers were forced to make quick and urgent decisions to deal with new risks and impacts on the organizational strategic objectives that were previously established.  The Audin were also challenged to change their planning to continue practicing their mission to assist the organization to accomplish their objectives. This study relates the effort of the Instituto Chico Mendes de Con-servação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio) Audin in evaluating the actions developed by this Institution to cope with coronavirus, almost concurrently to the definition of the mitigating measures by the management, enabling the course corrections on actions considered inadequate before causing negative impacts on organizational objectives.