KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 22 — The world’s largest anti-fraud organisation has yesterday given a thumbs up for the Auditor-General’s (A-G) Dashboard, as it enables Malaysians to see real-time online updates on how government entities are resolving problems found during audits.

Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) president John D. Gill said the A-G’s Dashboard is “really incredible”, hailing Malaysia as having led the way globally in boosting transparency through this online feature.

“I talk with members in government audit around the world, but this is the first I have ever seen where they implement a real-time dashboard where they put up findings,” he said yesterday at the 2025 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific here.

“It’s transparent, you can go in, you can look at it and see what the office is doing to protect your public funds. That is really revolutionary and my hats off to you in getting that pushed through.

“So I appreciate Malaysia seems to have really taken the lead, in like ‘look, we are guardians of the public and guardians of the public funds, and we want you all to be part of the process so you know what’s going on,’” he added,

Gill suggested that other countries and organisations such as companies could learn from Malaysia and start adopting the same approach.

“I think if we can be more transparent with what external fraud examiners and internal auditors are doing, and letting your employees and your customers know this is an important part of the job, and we are trying to safeguard company funds, to make sure that we can pay our employees and we can keep our prices low, so that’s extremely important,” he said.

Auditor-General Datuk Seri Wan Suraya Wan Mohd Radzi delivers the opening keynote during the ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific in Kuala Lumpur. August 21, 2025. — Picture by Raymond Manuel

Earlier in her keynote address at the same conference, A-G Datuk Seri Wan Suraya Wan Mohd Radzi spoke about the dashboard, which she said was developed by the National Audit Department (NAD).

She said the NAD has upgraded this online real-time monitoring platform to “improve follow-up actions, enhance transparency and reduce financial mismanagement”.

“It is something that can be logged on by the public in order to monitor what has happened to issues that have already been identified in the Auditor-General’s Report.

“So you can see in the A-G’s Dashboard, which states have the most issues unresolved, which ministries have a good track record in terms of resolving issues, and you can also trace what is the progress — whether a bridge that was supposed to be built has been done or not,” she said when giving examples of how the dashboard could be used.

She credited this dashboard as having led to organisation leaders such as heads of government departments now having the key performance indicator of resolving issues found in the Auditor-General’s Report.

She said the dashboard also helps support the government’s National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) 2024-2028 by strengthening financial governance in public agencies.

The dashboard can be found here: https://agdashboard.audit.gov.my/

Screengrab of the Auditor-General's Dashboard's website.

Wan Suraya said the NAD’s e-SelfAudit system is a revolutionary and innovative tool, which enables real-time auditing of government companies with immediate results on irregularities found.

Through the use of big data analytics and artificial intelligence in e-SelfAudit, she said the NAD’s financial auditing work has become more efficient and accurate: “In fact some of the things that used to take a few weeks, we can do it much faster. And enabling us to do a lot more verification and delving deeper into our audit process.”

Among other things, she said the NAD, which turns 120 next year, is evolving from a traditional compliance-based audit institution into a strategic partner in risk governance and anti-fraud assurance.

“And our mission is not only to audit public spending, but to protect public trust,” she said.

Screengrab of the Auditor-General's Dashboard that tracks progress in resolving issues found in the NAD's audits, with yellow being under action, red being no action, green being resolved.

At the conference, ACFE Malaysia announced two new awards, including the Best Supporting Partner of the Year to recognise organisations with outstanding contributions in promoting and anti-fraud culture.

The 2025 recipient was Petronas, which ACFE said had set a benchmark for fraud prevention and detection in Malaysia through its efforts such as strengthening whistleblowing channels.

The other award was the Certified Fraud Examiner award to honour individuals who uphold the highest standards of integrity and have significantly contributed to fraud detection and prevention, with this year’s recipient being former national hockey player and fraud fighter Maheswari Kanniah.