Making Accountability Work: Dilemmas for Evaluation and for Audit by Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc

Author:Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc [Bemelmans-Videc, Marie-Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351507691
Google: cCRBDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 2470640
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

What is Driving Change in Audit Practices?

The practice of performance audit is conducted within particular institutional settings and (therefore) power relationships. This setting is changing significantly, including both wider changes in public sector organization, and developments more specific to audit.

Many writers have noted that, in the U.K., the public sector changed in important ways during and after the 1980s (see, for example, Ling, 2002; Pierre and Peters, 2000; Rhodes, 1997 and 2000; Richards and Smith, 2002; Smith, 1999; Walsh, 1995). Others have observed equally significant changes in other OECD countries and the EU Commission (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000; OECD 2000). Although less frequently observed, this period also saw the reshaping of the institutions of accountability. In the U.K., changes in accountability arrangements at this time included: the reform of the Select Committee system in 1979-80 (Drewry 1989); the creation of the Audit Commission in 1982; the establishment of the NAO in its present form in 1984 (Lonsdale 2000); the extension of judicial review and the role of the courts; the wider use of citizens’ panels, scrutiny committees, stakeholder engagement and the like; the development of “consumer rights” in the public sector with the Citizens’ Charters and subsequent developments; and the extension of freedom of information (Pollitt, 2003: 100-101). Inevitably, this changing architecture of both delivery and accountability arrangements has implications for how evaluations to support performance audit are conducted. Here, we highlight five drivers of change.

The first driver is the emergence of more differentiated and complex supply chains in the public sector. In some instances, complexity is a consequence of a perceived need for a radically new way of delivering services, as with the deliberate move towards “joined-up government” in the UK (see Ling, 2002). In other instances, it is less planned and more incremental, with a build up of additional services or benefits, for example, the increasing complexity of the British social security system in the 1950s and 1960s (Ling, 1998, National Audit Office, 2005). In either case, the result has been a system associated with more uncertain relationships between actions and outcomes. Consequently, the problem of attribution has been exacerbated.

In the U.K., this trend to complexity has been reinforced by a movement from a unitary model (often called the “Westminster Model”) towards a “differentiated polity” model in which there are policy networks, power dependencies, and complex relationships between the centre and devolved regional, local, and mayoral authorities (see Rhodes, 1997). As a consequence, we are seeing a more variable geometry of accountability. Furthermore, traditional bureaucratic lines of control have either been augmented or replaced by additional mechanisms intended to deliver centrally-determined targets. In the U.K., this can be seen in the variety of central units intended to support one or another of a variety of objectives (such as social exclusion, innovation, crime reduction, and so forth).

British developments parallel changes elsewhere. The rise of more complex delivery chains is seen in a greater use of a networked and partnership approach to delivering services across most, if not all, OECD countries.

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