Tag Archives: Parliament

Case Study about Performance Audit Key Performance Indicators

Executive Summary: Governments, the Parliament and the people are increasingly demanding that public sector organisations undertake their functions in the most economical, efficient and effective manner. This requires agencies to provide meaningful and useful information on their performance and the achievement of desired outcomes. This Report is concerned with the issue of holding individual agencies accountable for their performance, and doing so in a reliable and consistent way across the New South Wales (NSW) public sector. Performance indicators, as the term itself suggests, are not an exact measure of achievement but rather provide an indication of agency performance. To be useful to members of parliament, Ministers and others, performance indicators must exhibit certain characteristics: appropriateness, relevance, accuracy, timeliness, completeness and comprehensiveness.

Up until the late 1970s, the notion of accountability was mainly concerned with a breakdown of inputs, with a distinct emphasis being placed on any underexpenditure of appropriations and reasons for any variations in the proposed budget from current expenditure results. Then central coordinating agencies – firstly in South Australia, then in Victoria and the Commonwealth – started to question this general approach.1 Accounting for results (or Program Budgeting as it was generally described at the time) – with the emphasis on inputs augmented by examining outputs and, where possible, outcomes – was introduced by those three Governments. In 1985-86 the NSW Government also recognised the importance of KPIs and introduced program budgeting. Keep reading…

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