Removing a troublesome role definition
One of the first prescriptional moves made by the Office to promote its expertise and views about performance measurement involved arguing against the direct assessment model, which had been initially suggested by government as the role for the Office in the 1993 Budget Speech. Under the direct assessment model, auditors measure and report on the performance of the organizations that they have audited (CCAF, 1996). Office members were not comfortable with this model, perceiving it as too distant from their traditional role of providing credibility to financial statements prepared by management. Office auditors preferred an approach that other state auditors increasingly were advocating, namely, the indirect assessment model – in which auditors provide credibility to measures developed by management: