Performance Audits Focused on the Principle of Effectiveness: An Overview of Public Audit Agencies

Abstract

According to international standards, performance audit is an independent and objective process for reviewing the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of a government’s program, organization, and/or activity in order to evaluate public management’s performance. The relevance of the matter prompted the present study, which aims to inquire if, when conducting performance audits, Supreme Audit Institutions analyze a procedure’s effectiveness, that is to say, the impact that determined government spending had on the program’s target population. In order to do so, a questionnaire was applied to auditors of Public Audit Institutions from several countries. As a preliminary result, our research concluded that the majority of auditors conduct economy, efficiency and efficacy analyses, but rarely assess the effectiveness of government spending.