Further, Government Accountability specifies
two role definitions for the Office in reforming
government – as auditor and advisor. The auditor
role implies the ability to provide credibility to performance
information disclosed by government
and departments. The advisory role implies using
the framework to identify opportunities for
improvement. Readers of the document could
therefore be reassured about the Office’s help in
implementing NPM. The Alberta government
reacted positively to Government Accountability:
The government took it [Government
Accountability] and used it as one of their
tools for change. And I think they used that.
The thing is a number of the concepts that I
think the government ultimately came
through were fleshed out in that book.
The
idea of ministerial reporting, this is not necessarily
our original idea, but we put a bit more meat to it. The idea of legislating it, I
think [the Provincial Treasurer] wanted to
do that, but he needed some leverage and
we provided the leverage. [. . .] We provided
leverage for things that were sort of on a
mutual agenda. (Office auditor, January
1998)