At this time, the Office considered program evaluation as a useful ally in trying to legitimize the emerging project of measuring government performance. However, in spite of the development in the 1980s of a professional and political network devoted to performance measurement, the Office (as well as other networks of accountants) had not yet fully constructed the types of problem that government or public servants would resolve, or avoid, by measuring and reporting on performance, or the relative roles of auditors, program managers and program evaluators.15 Callon (1986) refers to this construction as a process of problematization, the ways in which proponents seek to make their claim indispensable by defining or underlining the problems with which an audience is (allegedly) confronted, and by presenting as necessary, solutions advocated for these problems. From 1986 to 1991, the Office stopped discussing performance measurement in its reports. Nevertheless, Office auditors continued during this period to be interested in the notion of performance measurement. As mentioned by one auditor: Between then [1986] and the 1990s we might have flirted with it [performance measurement] a bit. It is tough to avoid, so you drift into it when you are doing some of the systems [i.e., efficiency] audits. (Office auditor, January 1998) The issue of performance measurement reemerges in the 1992 report of the Office – issued on January 29, 1993. Performance measurement is presented as a key to solving what was emerging as a central political issue, namely, the size of the Province’s annual deficits and debt. This political issue became crucial in promoting NPM, performance measurement and the Office’s expertise. Indeed:
I believe that, wherever possible, those managing public resources should deal with facts, and not opinions, on the effectiveness of programs. Timely information that is focused on results achieved, and their cost, is crucial to Members of the Legislative Assembly when setting future policy. Information on the results of government programs and their cost is needed to make sensible decisions to deal with Alberta’s annual deficit. (Office, 1992, p. 3) In this excerpt, performance measurement is presented as an ‘‘obligatory passage point’’ (Callon, 1986) for reducing the Province’s deficit. As shown below, the expansion of the network supporting performance measurement in the early 1990s provided the Office with a more persuasive and powerful basis for its arguments than previously. The Alberta Financial Review Commission: legitimizing initial claims to expertise