ARCHIVED - Linkages between Audit and Evaluation in Canadian Federal Departments (TBS Paper) - September 30, 1993

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Introduction

This paper will document the relationship between audit and evaluation in departments of the Canadian federal government and draw some lessons from the recent experiences of departments in studies involving both audit and evaluation.  It is based on interviews with fifteen individuals from departments' audit and evaluation units, ranging from officers of audit or evaluation to Assistant Deputy Ministers, an investigation of about ten other departments, and on a brief review of the current literature.

The first section will examine the theoretical issues behind linking audit and evaluation, including the forms of linkage existing in some Canadian federal departments.  The second part will examine the effects of these links on projects, clients, reviewers themselves, and the review groups as organizations.  To begin, however, we need a brief introduction to the language of audit-evaluation issues.

Discussion in the audit-evaluation field has in the past suffered from an inconsistent use of terms; a word about the terminology used in this paper therefore seems prudent.  Internal audit is defined in the Treasury Board Manual on Evaluation and Audit as the "assessment... against suitable criteria [of the].... collection of interrelated systems and practices adopted by management to achieve established objectives," in order that the deputy head and others may improve the cost-effective and accountable management of operations.  The same document defines program evaluation as an empirical "analysis of the performance of the program" so that the deputy head and others may reconsider "the future direction and resourcing of the program, including its design, delivery, and service levels."

Linkage herein refers to a condition in which audit and evaluation share organizational or functional space.  Organizational linkage describes a situation in which audit and evaluation groups are connected on a department's organization chart; this can range from both groups reporting to the same ADM, to complete fusion into a single group.  Functional linkage, by contrast, refers to an occasion or a system in which a review study deals with both audit and evaluation issues or in which both auditors and evaluators participate.  Any working relationship between audit and evaluation falls under the term functional linkage, but most interesting to this study are instances of the two functions being in formal and regular contact.

The term "review" is used here to refer to the audit and evaluation functions in the aggregate, and is mainly a stylistic device to spare the reader from tiring of the "audit and evaluation" construction.  Thus, the "review group" is that unit of a department responsible for audit and evaluation.  When capitalized, "Review" and "Reviewer" refer to the single discipline and its practitioner created in some departments by the fusion of audit and evaluation.

The present study was complicated by the June 1993 reorganization of government, which resulted in the abolition of several of the departments contributing to the project.  In numerous cases, departments with very different audit-evaluation relations were merged, and it is as yet unknown how the review groups for the new departments will be arranged.  This makes it difficult to cite the absolute number or proportion of departments choosing one form or another or to refer to groups by name, but the substance of their experiences and comments remains valid.

 

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