Evaluating the Effectiveness of Performance Audits in Improving Public Sector Accountability and Transparency

Posted: Oct 18, 2022

• Sophia Reed
• Amelia Daniels
• Jasper Lewis

Abstract

The role of performance audits in enhancing public sector governance has gained increasing attention in recent decades as governments worldwide face growing demands for accountability and transparency. Performance audits represent a critical mechanism for ensuring that public resources are used efficiently and effectively, while also serving as a tool for improving organizational performance and public trust. However, despite the substantial resources invested in performance auditing across various jurisdictions, there remains limited empirical evidence regarding the actual effectiveness of these audits in achieving their stated objectives of improving accountability and transparency. Traditional evaluation methods for audit effectiveness have predominantly relied on qualitative assessments, case studies, and self-reported survey data from audited entities. These approaches, while valuable for capturing nuanced contextual factors, suffer from limitations in scalability, objectivity, and comparability across different audit contexts. The absence of standardized quantitative metrics for measuring audit impact has constrained the ability of oversight bodies, policymakers, and researchers to systematically assess which audit approaches yield the most significant improvements in public sector governance. This research addresses these limitations by developing and applying a novel computational framework that combines natural language processing, network analysis, and temporal modeling to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of performance audits. Our approach represents a paradigm shift from conventional evaluation methodologies by introducing objective, scalable, and reproducible metrics for assessing audit impact. The framework enables the systematic analysis of large corpora of audit documents and related governance data.