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

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Conclusions

Organizational linkage appears to have some significant probable benefits, with relatively modest dangers. In addition to the potential resource savings which have been the motivation for senior management, the benefits include facilitating a client orientation in the form of a single window and the opportunity for each side to learn from the methods of the other. The danger is that individuals socialized in the separate professions will feel threatened by the proximity of a different culture and assume it reflects senior management's ignorance of the differences between the functions. The fact that organizational linkage has tended to follow cuts to the functions contributes to this negative association.

Approximately half the departments visited have performed a joint study between audit and evaluation in the recent past, with another quarter open to the possibility of doing so in the near future. In most of these cases, however, the process of a joint venture resembles separate but coordinated audit and evaluation studies. The traditional division of questions between the functions is generally respected.

Fusion into a single-function Review group carries potentially more serious negative consequences, and tends to be initiated for quite different reasons that the two preceding forms of linkage. It is too early to assess whether generalist "Reviewers" produce studies which are qualitatively different from those of auditors and evaluators, but the front-end costs in terms of training and acculturation appear quite high.

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