Supreme Audit Institution Capacity Development Multi Donor Trust Fund Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) play a vital role in helping their respective governments improve performance, enhance transparency, ensure accountability, fight corruption, and foster efficient service delivery for the benefit of their peoples.
 Diagnostics have consistently revealed the need for strengthening SAIs in many countries. However, global support to SAIs is fragmented, access to donor funds is limited (partly due to most bilateral and MDB aid being directed to supporting the executive branch of government), and donor coordination is not fully effective. Also donor support has catered in many cases to short-term training needs, rather than supporting the strategic plans of SAIs.
 SAI Strengthening Initiative: In the 2005 Paris Declaration, donors committed to harmonize their actions and reduce the fragmentation of aid and to rely, to the maximum extent possible, on strengthened partner countriesâ€™ financial management systems including external audit. Donor partners recognized that weak SAI capacity is one of the major obstacles in making greater use of country systems and that this is an area in which impact and results require working in unison. INTOSAI  proposed a stronger engagement by donors with the SAIs and requested the World Bank to use its convening powers to harness this support and bring donor organizations together to support coordinated SAI strengthening.
 The INTOSAIâ€“Donor MoU: The 2009 MoU has brought together donors (currently 21, including the Bank, have signed the MoU) and the SAI community in a common approach to development support. The overarching goal is to accelerate the strengthening of audit capacity in partner countries so that there is sustained improvement in accountability. In furtherance of the objectives of this MoU, a Steering Committee is formed to provide strategic guidance to this partnership and to monitor its implementation. The Steering Committee (SC) is co-chaired by SAI and donor representatives. Mr. Osama Faquih, Head of the Saudi Arabia SAI, and Mr. Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the US GAO, are respectively Chair and Deputy Chair of the SC. The World Bank (Ms. J. Thomson, Chief Financial Management Officer, OPCS) and DFID are the donor Chair and Deputy-Chair of the SC. A small Secretariat, financed by Donor agencies in Austria, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK, provides the Steering Committee with support in implementing the MoU. The Secretariat is housed in the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) located within the National Audit Office of Norway.
 The objectives of the INTOSAI-Donor Cooperation are to both scale up and improve the effectiveness of financial support to SAIs through different financing mechanisms. At present, there are no pooled funds at the global level, though there are pooled funds at the country level in certain countries. In some cases, existing funding mechanisms and allocations can be ad hoc and inefficient, sometimes resulting in duplicated efforts and high transaction costs for both SAIs and donors. Support provided to SAIs does not always reflect their highest priority needs, or align with their own strategic plans. Through improved coordination, and a more strategic focus at the country level, a global capacity fund is considered to add value to the overall INTOSAI-Donor Cooperation in the following ways:
 â€¢	Increasing the level of support to SAIs in developing countries: by providing a focal point for additional funding combined with strong processes for allocation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of funds to ensure that funds are used effectively.
 â€¢	Improving the coordination of support: by channeling funding through a central point which will scrutinize proposals and look for opportunities to enhance coordination amongst the donors.
 â€¢	Strengthening the focus on SAIsâ€™ strategic and development plans: by making strong, nationally developed plans a key criteria for receiving funding under this CDF.
 â€¢	Reducing transaction costs for donors and SAIs: by introducing standardized templates for funding applications and ensuring single-point monitoring of implementation.
 â€¢	Enhancing the allocative efficiency of donor funding to SAIs: by establishing a process which identifies, evaluates and prioritizes the different funding requirements eliminates the possibility of some SAIs being under assisted while others receive relatively generous support.
 â€¢	Enabling donors to achieve a global impact: by establishing a global program, donors without a field presence in a number of countries will be able to fund and contribute to SAI development activities in many low and middle income as well as fragile countries.
 The overall objective of the SAI CDF is to strengthen governance and public financial management in developing countries, through direct capacity development support to SAIs and through INTOSAI global and regional bodies. This development support to SAIs will strengthen their capacity, which is weak in many countries, to effectively discharge their functions, and in particular, to strengthen accountability over the use of public funds.