Can Enhanced Accountability Improve Performance? The Impact of Auditing in Taiwan
Hsin-Fang Tsai
Abstract
Auditing is an indispensable part of governance. The Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) should effectively promote good governance and become a main authority which plays a role for oversight, insight and foresight. David Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said, “We’re in the business of helping government work better and holding it accountable to the people. To this end, GAO provides Congress with oversight of agency operations, insight into ways to improve government and foresight about future challenges. Auditors are intended for their work to improve the performance of the agencies they audited.” However, has auditing actually improved government performance? Or has it undermined public trust ultimately by nit-picking, pouncing on minor errors and punishing?
This paper adopted quantitative content analysis to describe the performance evaluation of the National Audit Office in Taiwan, to deconstruct and interpret the impacts the audit reports might have had on the effectiveness, efficiency and mechanisms of public services. The author concluded that the work of Supreme Audit Institution assists auditees to find problems and provide feasible solutions, some of which have been adopted. Suggestions such as how to promote the projects’ management and implementation, and how to improve the policy planning are emphasized. Gradually auditing has a positive effect on improving performance. In the meantime, the types of impacts of performance auditing in Taiwan are also instrumental and tactical. In other words, action was often taken during the auditing process to remedy failings found in the functioning of a government entity and had impacts on the decision-making process.
Keywords: audit, performance auditing, accountability, auditing impact, content analysis
* Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration and Management, Chinese Culture University. email: ianrose0921@gmail.com.