Advancing Sustainable Internal Audit in Iraq’s Supreme Audit Institutions: A Proposed Conceptual Framework

Purpose - The movement of public funds has always been of interest to stakeholders as public revenues and expenditures are regarded as major stimulus to the economic growth of a country. Therefore, this conceptual paper seeks to investigate the role of Iraq’s Federal Board of Supreme Audit Control (FBSA) in enhancing sustainable internal audits.Design/methodology/approach - A review of published articles from 2003 to 2020 was conducted. From the keywords, 4 relevant databases were searched and discussion of the results of 45 articles were appropriate for this study.Findings – The paper proposed a framework that suggests the need for policy reforms to take effect so as to enhance the role of FBSAC in Iraq. This is important to policymakers and financial auditors, and the urgent necessity for policy reform in supreme audit institutions(SAIs).Research limitations/implications – This paper is limited to reviewing the extant literature to provide a bottom-up exploration of sustainable internal audit in the Iraq’s public sector.Practical implications – The findings of this paper contributes to enhance better accountability to the people. The emerged discussion will alleviate the scarcity of literature, notably in Iraq’s FBSA. As part of the practical implications, this paper advocates for the creation of policies and reforms that will empower the FBSA to improve public audits and to ultimately enhance the public sector’s accountability.Original/value – This paper demonstrates that some of the existing FBSA policies need to be overhaul for better efficiency.