This publication considers the relationship between performance auditing and public sector modernisation and the extent to which performance auditing could or should improve the performance of public sector organisations.

'It is time, 15 years on from the coining of the "Audit Explosion", to re-appraise the growth of new forms of auditing. As we move into what might be called "Auditing in Austerity" this book gives us that overview. An extremely well-informed team of authors has been assembled to deliver a comparative analysis that successfully mixes "insider" and "outsider" perspectives. This should be required reading, not just for auditors and their academic hangers-on, but for the wider audience of those interested in contemporary developments in democratic accountability and policymaking.' – Christopher Pollitt, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium 'This book fills an important gap in the market. At a time when governments around the world face the largest deficits in decades, there is a strong need to reduce public expenditures whilst ensuring greater value for money from public services. This book addresses these concerns and many more. Each of the chapter authors is a senior practitioner and/or an academic who specialises in performance auditing and accountability in modern complex democracies. They explore the nature of the concepts which underlie current practice; set out a variety of institutional structures and processes, and identify the limits of both theory and practice. These make this a book of considerable significance and one which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the democratic process. This is not a narrowly-focused book only of interest to those who specialise in performance auditing. Given the richness of its analysis and the fine-grained understanding of institutions and processes, it has much to say to students of public administration, management and policy analysis. I am confident that this will rapidly become the standard reference for those who are interested in performance auditing.' – Peter M. Jackson AcSS, University of Leicester, UK 'What a good read. Insightful and challenging. It is likely to incite a lot of discussion on the wide-ranging views from the very well-informed and qualified contributors, not least from those who actually have to implement the findings and recommendations of performance audit reports. The focus is rightly on accountability for performance not only in achieving government program objectives in an economic, efficient and effective manner, but also on the audit institutions themselves. It should be welcomed by the public sector and particularly by the parliamentary institutions concerned with achieving accountability for government performance.' – Pat Barrett AO, Australian National University and former Australian Auditor-General (1995–2005) 'This book is a much welcome tonic for public administration. It is one of the few books that explicitly focus on how audit institutions carry out their performance auditing responsibilities. While auditors will likely read this, the authors have geared the book to a broader readership, including public managers who are often the subject of performance audits.' – From the foreword by Paul Posner, George Mason University, US This state-of-the-art book examines the development of performance audit, drawing on the experience in a number of different countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The expert contributors identify the trajectory of performance audit, examine how it is conducted and consider what it is contributing to effective government. They conclude that, in the face of new challenges, performance auditors should focus both on their core responsibilities to ensure accountability, and continue to develop more insightful and sophisticated approaches to enable them to assess the growing complexity of the delivery of public services. By doing so, they can continue to play a valuable role in democratic accountability. Providing an up-to-date overview and discussion of performance audit, this highly topical book will appeal to all those working within audit, academics working in the fields of public management and public administration, as well practitioners in and close to state audit institutions. Members of Parliament, evaluators, internal auditors, researchers, policy analysts and consultants will also find this book invaluable.

Environment and sustainable development challenges are a matter of global concern. Trillions of dollars of mostly public money are invested every year in domestic and international policies and programs to address these challenges. The effectiveness of these policies and programs is critical to environmental sustainability. Performance audits that examine the effectiveness of governmental policies and programs heavily influence their implementation. Despite this, performance auditing in the environment field has received very little academic attention. This book takes a closer look at performance auditing of public sector environmental policies and programs. It examines trends in global environmental performance auditing; and how it is currently practiced drawing on a global survey and case studies from Canada, India and Australia. In doing so, it identifies issues and challenges faced by Supreme Audit Institutions in undertaking these performance audits. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainable development, environmental auditing and public sector auditing as well as to donor organisations engaged in these areas.

Project Performance Review focuses on evaluating projects efficiently and in context, identifying important improvement opportunities and leading project and organizational management practices. It advises how these can be put in place to give stakeholders confidence in the control and delivery of their projects without waste. The authors explain not just the mechanism and objective of project performance reviews but also the ideal environment in which they are intended to be implemented. The shaping of this environment, by the stakeholders and technical team, is key to achieving your intended outcomes. Without the professional cooperation of all interested and informed parties, the effectiveness of any review may be compromised. Topics addressed include: introducing the project review method, engaging project stakeholders, ensuring project governance, conducting project risk assessments, improving accountability, providing project assurance, organizing and managing projects, optimizing review scope and approach, avoiding review pitfalls, meeting existing audit standards, and proposing alternate approaches to project evaluation.

The public sector continues to play a strategic role across the world and in the last thirty years there have been major shifts in approaches to its management. This text identifies the trends in public management and the effects these have had, as well as providing a broad overview to each topic.

Traditionally, American government has created detailed, formal procedures to ensure that its agencies and employees are accountable for finances and fairness. Now in the interest of improved performance, we are asking our front-line workers to be more responsive, we are urging our middle managers to be innovative, and we are exhorting our public executives to be entrepreneurial. Yet what is the theory of democratic accountability that empowers public employees to exercise such discretion while still ensuring that we remain a government of laws? How can government be responsive to the needs of individual citizens and still remain accountable to the entire polity? In Rethinking Democratic Accountability, Robert D. Behn examines the ambiguities, contradictions, and inadequacies in our current systems of accountability for finances, fairness, and performance. Weaving wry observations with political theory, Behn suggests a new model of accountability—with "compacts of collective, mutual responsibility"—to address new paradigms for public management.

How well do governments do in converting the resources they take from us - like taxes - into services that improve the well-being of individuals, groups, and society as a whole? In other words: how well do they perform? This question has become increasingly prominent in public debates over the past couple of decades, especially in the developed world but also in developing countries. As the state has grown during the second half of the 20th century, so pressures to justify its role in producing public services have also increased. Governments across the world have implemented all sorts of policies aimed at improving performance. But how much do we know about what actually improves performance of public organisations and services? On what theories, explicit or more often implicit, are these policies based? The answer is: too much and too little. There are dozens of theories, models, assumptions, and prescriptions about 'what works' in improving performance. But there's been very little attempt to 'join up' theories about performance and make some sense of the evidence we have within a coherent theoretical framework. This ground-breaking book sets out to begin to fill this gap by creatively synthesising the various fragments and insights about performance into a framework for systematically exploring and understanding how public sector performance is shaped. It focuses on three key aspects: the external 'performance regime' that drives performance of public agencies; the multiple dimensions that drive performance from within; and the competing public values that frame both of these and shape what public expects from public services.

This title was first published in 2001: In this compelling work, Matthew Flinders examines how far alternative forms of accountability have evolved and the extent to which they remedy the current shortcomings of the parliamentary system. Adopting a pluralistic perspective, this exploration of the accountability of the core executive is clearly grounded in research methodology, thus ensuring the book makes a valid, incisive contribution to the literature. Features include: - A detailed study of the location of power and mechanisms of accountability in modern government which challenges the largely prosaic existing literature - Useful summaries of the key tensions and trends within constitutional infrastructure - A new and refreshing approach to the study of central government - Insightful critiques of major governmental policies This intriguing volume will be of interest to undergraduates, post-graduates and lecturers for courses on legislative studies, central government reform, public administration, British politics and research methods.