Becoming involved with public servants
In Measuring Performance – A Reference Guide (1996), the Office suggests it should provide audit opinions on departmental performance measures. 24 However, Office members feared that conducting audits of performance measures before the related knowledge base is sufficiently developed could tarnish the Office’s emergent reputation. They felt that they had to consolidate their expertise. As one auditor stated: “We wanted to do something. We wanted to do it in a way that didn’t compromise our standards and we wanted to do it in a way that supported without being too critical of the various activities of government.” Hence in 1996–1997 the Office started to “assess” the performance measures disclosed in departments’ annual reports. These assessments mainly consist of making sure that calculations within the measures are arithmetically correct and that the information provided in the measures is in accordance with the internal reports from the departments’ systems or other statistical sources. The standards under which assessments are conducted are therefore easy to meet. Results of the assessments are disclosed in an Office report that is included in the annual report of every department. These assessment reports, entitled “Report of the Auditor General on the Results of Applying Specified Auditing Procedures to Key Performance Measures”, signal that commenting on the measurement of government performance is within the purview of the Office.
Further, in 1997 the Office started to perform (if requested by departments) “non-audit assessments,” which consist of providing private feedback on performance measurement systems and the measures they produce, especially to assess whether they are adequate and representative of the department’s objectives and critical risk areas. Giving help to departments on how to implement the performance measurement project provided further opportunities to show that the Office is knowledgeable in measuring performance of government units. Similarly, the Office sought to develop a cooperative relationship with auditees when developing recommendations on performance measurement to be disclosed in the Office’s annual report:
We work more now with the various clients group, the deputy ministry level […] in terms of selling our recommendations. We try to get management buy in. […] So we are doing things […] that help market the suggestions and also help in terms of framing the recommendations so they are more palatable if you like. […] So we are getting better input from the client and so there is a better working relationship. (Office auditor, January 1998)
To us, the use of the word “client” is consistent with the Office playing – or at least striving to play – a major advisory role in Alberta. Meetings with “clients” to discuss audit findings allowed Office members to avoid irritating public servants by issuing unexpected recommendations, and to explain in detail their views.
Arguing for the indirect method, publishing a booklet on government accountability, and working with government departments represent conditions of possibility for a coherent claim to expertise. It is by constructing multiple connections with the network of literature on performance measurement, and by conducting their own experiments to solve local difficulties and problems, that Office members progressively produced their claim to expertise and “enacted” their new role in government. In the next section, we examine how Alberta public servants reacted to these claims.