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.