Auditors’ conference: quality data are essential for decision-making – so why don’t ministries use accounting data?
PRESS RELEASE ON THE 11TH AUDITORS’ CONFERENCE – 14 November 2025
High-quality, well-supported data are essential for planning and decision-making. Yet not everyone makes use of them in their work. This is evident, for example, in the use of state accounting information. While statisticians and macroeconomists find state accounting data useful, ministries themselves rarely use these data to inform their decisions. State accounting is not used in budget preparation or to compare financial performance with budgetary plans (more here: press release - 13 November). This and other issues were highlighted on Thursday, 13 November 2025, at the 11th Auditors’ Conference, entitled “Data for Decision-Making”.
“We meet at a time when effective use of data is a key prerequisite for successful organisational management. Data are becoming a strategic asset, determining success in business, the efficiency of public administration, and the quality of public services,” stated Miloslav Kala, President of the Supreme Audit Office (SAO), at the conference. He emphasised that the SAO provides more than enough high-quality data in its audit reports, yet the audited institutions do not use these data in their decision-making. Using one specific example, he illustrated the consequences: “When municipalities are unable to sanction even one per cent of offences measured by high-speed weighbridges on our most truck-laden motorway, the decision to install an additional weighbridge is not based on the data we provided to the Ministry of Transport.”
Regarding state accounting data, which are underutilised by state managers, the SAO President added: “Data should not be collected for their own sake, but specifically for informed decision-making. Without this, we will not achieve high-quality governance of our state.”
The panellists agreed that data must be reliable and verified. “We live in a world of data and information overload. The fact that we can trust certain data, that they have been independently verified, is immensely valuable today. The reliability of data reported in financial statements is ensured by audits carried out by a statutory auditor,” stated Ladislav Mejzlík, President of the Chamber of Auditors of the Czech Republic and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Finance and Accounting at the Prague University of Economics and Business. He noted that incorrect or even deliberately misleading data are often produced and published nowadays: “Data manipulation is a new area of criminal activity. Artificial intelligence (AI) learns from data, which can then be ‘recycled’ in responses to our queries. Incorrect data are more dangerous for decision-making than their absence,” he added. Ľubomír Andrassy, President of the Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic, confirmed this, saying: “It is important to us that data do not lead us into a dead end, that we do not make poor decisions based on poor data, but that data help us to make the best possible decisions.”
The conference took place at the headquarters of the SAO in Prague and was organised by the Czech Institute of Internal Auditors, the Chamber of Auditors of the Czech Republic, the SAO, the Public Audit Oversight Board, and the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office