Contribution to public sector entities
Implementation of recommendations made in audit reports is not mandatory and they must stand on their merits. A major outcome from our performance audit work is improvement in management and administration of major Australian Government programmes brought about by entities’ acceptance and implementation of recommendations made in our audit reports. Performance audit reports also provide assurance to the Parliament about the way an area of public administration is being conducted.
Agreement to recommendations
Improvements in administration, accountability and better service delivery are more likely to occur if the recommendations in performance audit reports are agreed by the audited entity at the time of the audit, and we make genuine efforts to achieve this result. However, differences will occur on some occasions and when this happens, agency comments are included in full in the final report.
For 2006–07 we made 192 full recommendations in our audit reports to improve agency performance and accountability. By way of explanation, these recommendations are sometimes broken down into components for clarity, such that it is possible to agree with parts of one recommendation and disagree with other parts. Of the 192 recommendations 176 (92 per cent) were fully agreed in all parts, 14 (7 per cent) were agreed but with some qualification or in part. Two recommendations were not agreed.
This is an improvement on last year’s result where 89 per cent of our recommendations were fully agreed and ten per cent were agreed overall, but with some qualification or in part.