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Constitution and Administration

• Housing Department's mechanism for taking follow-up action against unauthorised alterations by public housing tenants.

The Ombudsman received 11,564 enquiries and 4,862 complaints in 2016-17. Areas attracting a substantial number of complaints related to error, wrong advice or decision, ineffective control, and delay or inaction.

Although the Ombudsman has no authority to enforce recommendations, 83.1 per cent of her recommendations have been accepted by the organisations concerned as at 31 March 2017.

Audit Commission

The Audit Commission, headed by the Director of Audit, is established under the Basic Law, which provides that it shall function independently and be accountable to the Chief Executive.

The Audit Ordinance provides for the audit of the government's accounts by the Director of Audit and for the submission of the director's reports to the President of the Legislative Council. The director also audits the accounts of the Exchange Fund, the Hong Kong Housing Authority, five trading funds and more than 60 other funds, and reviews the financial operations of multifarious government-subvented organisations.

The director carries out two types of audit: regularity audits and value-for-money audits. Regularity audits aim to provide an overall assurance of the general accuracy and propriety of the financial and accounting transactions of the government and other audited bodies. The director has statutory authority under the ordinance to conduct regularity audits.

Value-for-money audits aim to provide independent information, advice and assurance about the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which any government bureau, department, agency, other public body, public office or audited organisation has discharged its functions. Except for some public organisations where the director has statutory authority to conduct value-for-money audits, these audits are carried out according to a set of guidelines agreed between the director and the legislature's Public Accounts Committee and accepted by the

government.

In 2017, three of the director's reports were submitted to the President of the Legislative Council and laid before the council, to be considered by the committee: one report on the audit certification of the government's accounts for the preceding financial year and two on the results of value-for-money audits, Report No 68 of April 2017 and Report No 69 of October 2017.

For Report No 68, the committee selected three of the eight chapters for public hearing, namely 'Government's support and monitoring of charities, 'Monitoring of charitable fund- raising activities' and 'Provision of district council funds for community involvement projects, and investigated the remaining five chapters by making written enquiries.

For Report No 69, the committee selected two of the nine chapters for public hearing, namely 'Administration of lump sum grants by the Social Welfare Department' and 'Procurement and

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