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.
Further, in 1997 the Office started to perform (if
requested by departments) ‘‘non-audit assessments,’’
which consist of providing private feedback
on performance measurement systems and the
measures they produce, especially to assess whether
they are adequate and representative of the department’s
objectives and critical risk areas. Giving help
to departments on how to implement the performance
measurement project provided further
opportunities to show that the Office is knowledgeable
in measuring performance of government
units. Similarly, the Office sought to develop a cooperative
relationship with auditees when developing
recommendations on performance measurement
to be disclosed in the Office’s annual report:
We work more now with the various clients
group, the deputy ministry level [...] in terms
of selling our recommendations. We try to
get management buy in. [...] So we are doing
things [...] that help market the suggestions
and also help in terms of framing the recommendations
so they are more palatable if you
like. [...] So we are getting better input from
the client and so there is a better working
relationship. (Office auditor, January 1998)
To us, the use of the word ‘‘client’’ is consistent
with the Office playing – or at least striving to
play – a major advisory role in Alberta. Meetings
with ‘‘clients’’ to discuss audit findings allowed
Office members to avoid irritating public servants
by issuing unexpected recommendations, and to
explain in detail their views.
Arguing for the indirect method, publishing a
booklet on government accountability, and working
with government departments represent conditions
of possibility for a coherent claim to
expertise. It is by constructing multiple connections
with the network of literature on performance
measurement, and by conducting their
own experiments to solve local difficulties and
problems, that Office members progressively produced
their claim to expertise and ‘‘enacted’’ their
new role in government. In the next section, we
examine how Alberta public servants reacted to
these claims.
Responding to the Office’s claims to expertise
Recall that initially, when the Office and the
AFRC pushed for performance measurement
and a central role for auditors, public servants initially
had serious reservations about the Office’s
expertise, and many felt threatened by the Office’s
potential powers:
There has been a lot of talk over the last two
years [i.e., 1994 and 1995] or so that the Auditor
General was going to be the performance
measurer with a big stick. And that there
were going to be all sorts of efficiency auditors,
for lack of a better term, who were going
to come in from the Auditor General’s Office,
and they were going to not only audit the
financial side of things, they were going to
audit performance measures and everything.
[...] And you were going to be held accountable
on the spot, if you said you were going to
do this, and you had not done it, why had
you not done it. And right down the line.