Becoming involved with public servants
In Measuring Performance – A Reference Guide
(1996), the Office suggests it should provide audit
opinions on departmental performance measures.24
However, Office members feared that conducting
audits of performance measures before the related knowledge base is sufficiently developed could tarnish
the Office’s emergent reputation. They felt that
they had to consolidate their expertise. As one auditor
stated: ‘‘We wanted to do something. We
wanted to do it in a way that didn’t compromise
our standards and we wanted to do it in a way that
supported without being too critical of the various
activities of government.’’ Hence in 1996–1997 the
Office started to ‘‘assess’’ the performance measures
disclosed in departments’ annual reports. These
assessments mainly consist of making sure that calculations
within the measures are arithmetically
correct and that the information provided in the
measures is in accordance with the internal reports
from the departments’ systems or other statistical
sources. The standards under which assessments
are conducted are therefore easy to meet. Results
of the assessments are disclosed in an Office report
that is included in the annual report of every department.
These assessment reports, entitled ‘‘Report of
the Auditor General on the Results of Applying
Specified Auditing Procedures to Key Performance
Measures’’, signal that commenting on the measurement
of government performance is within the
purview of the Office.