More “What is an Audit?”

Following on from this post, here are some definitions of an Audit from other sources:

Auditor
Noun
S: (n) hearer, listener, auditor, attender (someone who listens attentively)
S: (n) auditor (a student who attends a course but does not take it for credit)
S: (n) auditor (a qualified accountant who inspects the accounting records and practices of a business or other organization)

Audit (plural audits)
From Latin auditus ‘a hearing’, from audire ‘to hear’.
1. An examination in general.
2. A judicial examination.
3. An independent review and examination of records and activities to assess the adequacy of system controls, to ensure compliance with established policies and operational procedures, and to recommend necessary changes in controls, policies, or procedures
(eg National Assembly audit)
4. (Scientology) Spiritual counseling, which forms the core of Dianetics.

Higher Education Audit
An audit is an independent external evaluation that clarifies whether the quality assurance system meets the objectives, is efficient and fit for its purpose. During an audit, objectives and operating results are not analysed as such. Instead, the audit evaluates the processes used by the higher education institution to control and improve the quality of educational and other activities.

Energy audit
An energy audit is an inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows for energy conservation in a building, process or system to reduce the amount of energy input into the system without negatively affecting the output(s).

Energy audits initially became popular in response to the energy crisis of 1973 and later years. Interest in energy audits has recently increased as a result of growing understanding of human impact upon global warming and climate change.

Auditors of Reality
The Auditors of Reality are fictional godlike beings in Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld series of fantasy novels. They are one of the major recurring villains in the series, although they lack the necessary imagination to be truly evil.

Democratic Audit of Australia

Since 2002 a team at the Australian National University has been conducting Audits to assess Australia’s strengths and weaknesses as a democratic society.

The Audit recognises that democracy is a complex notion, and so applies a detailed set of questions which has already been field-tested in overseas countries.

The values used by the Democratic Audit of Australia as the basis of assessment are:

  • political equality
  • popular control of government
  • civil liberties and human rights
  • the quality of public deliberation

Saint Auditor, Christian martyr of the 4th century.

2 thoughts on “More “What is an Audit?”

  1. hi lucas,

    we’ve begun putting data together this morning to send you regarding the resources used to make our food forest: for instance we drove 2175km to come up for the installation alone; and yet we returned home to an electricity notice that paid us $45 dollars for the last quarter, the one before that was $57 to us courtesay of our solar feed-in tariffs. these past 6 months we have been running our home/office on solar and producing much surplus.

    how all these factors can be considered in the development of our food forest is a tricky thing. how do we, for example acknowledge all the home-made preserves we brought with us and edible weeds we found and ate while in sydney for the installation, with foods we brought in stores deriving from carbon intensive farming?

    we think your project is wonderful and look forward to the conclusions you draw on what constitutes an environmental audit. we’ll be sending you more comprehensive data shortly.

    with love,
    the aaf

  2. thanks family!

    looking forward to your data crunching, i really appreciate your keen participation and interested to find out what it will all lead to!

    you’re right, it’s SO hard to take account of everything.

    but the attempt is interesting in itself… and i like the idea of your solar panels feeding all that unused sunlight back into the grid while you’re away from home!

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