I. Characteristics of government performance auditing
Government performance auditing, as a higher level of audit activities, has its own unique characteristics.
1, the broad scope of the review. Performance audit of the audited unit has a broader meaning, it not only includes government departments and their affiliated units, but also includes other units that use public **** funds. Because of the business activities of government departments and the use of various resources, the operation has a very wide radiation, so the audit needs to be involved in many units at the same time. Therefore, the object of performance auditing includes both material production sector, including non-material production sector, as well as the audit of investment projects, etc.; the scope of application is also much broader, including the audited unit's business activities, including other non-economic categories of management activities. It is in addition to the usual government agencies, financial revenue and expenditure and public **** project audit, but also includes the economy of government investment, efficiency, effectiveness of the necessary review.
2, the diversity of audit standards. Performance auditing often lacks a clear legal system or indicators as the standard of evaluation. The performance of the business activities of non-profit organizations have both economic and social benefits. Measurement of economic benefits can be applied to value indicators, while the social benefits are difficult to quantitatively summarize, the need to use qualitative standards. This requires consideration of analyzing the specific circumstances of each audited unit or project for comprehensive assessment.
3, the continuity of the audit process. Government and institutional performance, some of which can be reflected immediately, the performance of some business activities need to go through a period of time to show. In particular, the public **** engineering projects, especially some public **** inputs, such as the governance of ecological imbalance, it is difficult to see in the short term can be described in figures the benefits. Therefore, when conducting performance audits, only the direct performance of operational activities in the current period is reviewed, and it is difficult to obtain sufficient audit evidence to fully evaluate their performance. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a tracking audit, that is, to review the lagging benefits of business activities.
4, the diversity of audit methods. The variability of audit content determines the flexibility of the audit method. Government performance audits not only use the traditional, generic financial audit methods (such as the method of smooth checking, inverse checking, detailed checking, sampling method, etc.), and more is the use of analytical method, systematic theory, argumentation method, evaluation method, and some even use the fuzzy synthesis of the judgment method, and so on. Auditors must be based on the audit object, the different objectives of the development of different audit programs, select the appropriate audit method.
5, constructive audit conclusions. Government performance audit has been extended to economic, social and political aspects, it is through a comprehensive evaluation of the audited unit of economic and business activities of the "economic" and "effective" degree, revealing the impact of the performance of the problem, to the audited unit to improve the proposal The constructive role of the audit is particularly prominent, as it points out specific ways and means to further improve performance. The whole process of auditing is always focused on pointing out the problems and tapping the potential of the center, with a view to improving efficiency and enhancing effectiveness.
Second, the significance and role of government performance auditing
Performance auditing is a new stage in the development of government auditing, is to deepen the reform of the government's administrative system, to promote the transformation of government functions, to improve the quality of government services, and to enhance the performance of government management.
1, carry out performance auditing is the development of socialist democratic politics needs. Audit system as a superstructure, is an important part of the social system. It occupies a special position in the political and economic system of society - to ensure the normal operation of the political and economic system, and promote the further improvement of the political and economic system. China is currently undergoing the construction of socialist democratic politics on the government audit put forward new requirements, service-oriented government requirements of its public **** material assets and human resources allocation, consumption must be subject to public scrutiny, and truly achieve the power for the people, feelings for the people, the benefits for the people; government departments and institutions, the efficiency of the work of the people, the fulfillment of the responsibility of the people's services for the good or bad as more and more people are attention. The establishment of a perfect and effective government performance audit system is conducive to the people of the public **** income and expenditure of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of effective supervision, improve the people's participation in the supervision of the enthusiasm of the people, so as to better carry forward socialist democracy, promote the improvement and development of socialist democratic political system.
2, to carry out performance audits is to establish a clean and efficient government needs. The implementation of performance audits can be based on financial audits, from the cost-benefit, cost-effect perspective of government spending to measure the rationality and effectiveness of its material and human resources allocation and consumption, and these elements directly reflect the rationality of the government institutional setup, whether the government civil servants are responsible for the ability to match the responsibility, whether the ability to match the responsibility. Whether there are problems of corruption and waste, so that corruption can be detected and exposed from the source, in order to promote the improvement of the party style and political style, and further enhance the party's governing ability. At the same time, the government performance audit can reveal the poor decision-making, wrong decision-making, blind decision-making, rash decision-making due to the ineffective work of individual government departments, so as to violate the laws of socio-economic development, detached from the objective reality, and engage in "performance projects" and "image projects", resulting in serious losses. "and cause serious losses and waste, in order to firmly establish and implement the scientific concept of development, the correct concept of performance, and promote the comprehensive development of the economy, society and people.
3, to carry out performance audits is to improve the performance of financial expenditure, to ensure that the state functions properly play the need. With the transformation of the planned economy to a market economy, requires our country to use resources as economically and efficiently as possible in the case of limited resources. All financial expenditures, should be carefully calculated, practice economy, the limited funds on the knife edge, to maximize the use of efficiency. In the limited financial resources of our country, regular supervision and inspection of the performance of financial expenditure is conducive to the supervision of various departments and units to strengthen the control of financial expenditure and improve the performance of financial expenditure. In this way, China's financial expenditure on the one hand can maintain the normal operation of the state functionaries themselves, on the other hand, can provide more public **** services for the community, so as to ensure that the function of the state in the social and economic life of the normal play.
Third, China's government performance auditing problems
However, China's performance auditing is still just starting, to really establish a performance audit system with Chinese characteristics, it is necessary to quite a period of exploration and attempts, not only in the whole of the government auditing community to inject the concept of performance auditing, but also in the theoretical continue to carry out in-depth and detailed research, to enrich and clarify. At present, in our country to carry out performance auditing problems faced by the following aspects:
1, the audit concept is backward. Due to the audit community in China, the performance audit is still limited to a relatively small scope of knowledge, a significant portion of the auditors just have some initial impression of the term, as to what its actual content, specific how to operate, but also know very little. From the current only some of the literature, most of them still stay in the introduction of the relevant situation in foreign countries. Some people even believe that performance auditing is a product of Western countries, not in line with China's national conditions, in the existing audit task is very heavy situation and then go to this kind of fancy things, seems to be of little significance. Coupled with the fact that our country is in a period of economic transition, the old concepts are broken, the new concepts have not yet been established; there is a bad moral culture in society, the social status of the audit is not commensurate with the functions it plays; financial and economic activities are not highly transparent; imperfections in the rule of law leading to the prevalence of false accounts; many budget expenditure units responsible for the responsibility of the weak, old-fashioned concepts, do not understand the audit work or even have a resistance to the psychological. All of these factors affect the development of performance auditing.
2, the government system is not smooth enough. Although the reform of China's government system has made great achievements, but there are still some problems: government functions have not been completely transformed, many organizations are still in a wide range of large-scale configuration of social resources; the lack of scientific government performance assessment mechanism, the government is inefficient; government departments have cross-cutting powers, inefficient management; government activities are not highly open and transparent; in addition, the system of administrative laws and regulations has not yet been perfected; there are Bureaucracy and corruption. As the main body of the performance audit of the government audit organs also exist the same defects, and at a deeper level to constrain and affect the development of China's government performance audit.
3, public **** financial unsound. China's public **** financial system is not yet perfect, the government oversteps, misplaced and lack of phenomenon still exists, people do not have enough knowledge of public **** financial, resulting in bias in practice. With the concept of public *** fiduciary responsibility continues to grow, the public's demand for government audit no longer rests only on the authenticity and legality of the audit of financial revenues and expenditures above, they are more concerned about the effect of financial expenditures. But the public *** financial system is not perfect, will make the government audit of financial revenue and expenditure of the effect of the audit is not enough, the focus is still concentrated in the financial revenue and expenditure of the authenticity and legitimacy of the audit above, which also fundamentally restricts the development of China's government performance audit.
4, the audit scope is narrow. At present, in China's government audit practice, the real meaning of performance audit is not too much, mainly in: (1) for the main public **** department also that is, the administrative units of the expenditure, special funds, now also rarely carry out performance audits. (2) State-owned enterprises is the earliest field to carry out economic efficiency audit, but in recent years, with the deepening of the reform of state-owned enterprises, the modern enterprise system and the gradual establishment of effective incentives and constraints mechanism, state-owned asset management to reform and improve the management of state-owned assets, focusing on enterprise performance has become more and more a conscious behavior of the enterprise managers, the performance of these enterprises seems to have ceased to be the focus of attention of the government audit Problems, there is a tendency to tilt to the internal audit. (3) Finance is the initial source of public **** funds, the current financial audit of the main force on the real and legitimate, out of the funds as long as the expenditure channels in line with the provisions of the other side did receive can be, as for the funds are used for the original goal, the utility of how it is often not too in-depth study. (4) with the rise of government procurement work, the audit of government procurement activities have been carried out for several years, the main concern is still true, legal and compliance, for the entire procurement activities of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of not much consideration.
5, the lack of audit standards. 1999, the Ministry of Finance and other relevant departments have issued the "State-owned capital funds performance evaluation rules", "State-owned capital funds performance evaluation of the operating rules", "Enterprise Performance Evaluation Standards", "Enterprise Performance Evaluation Operating Rules", etc., for the in-depth development of the evaluation of the performance of the work of the enterprise to standardize the evaluation of the performance of the enterprise to enhance the objectivity and impartiality of the evaluation results. Provides favorable conditions. However, for the performance audit of the government public **** department, there is no clear specification, neither the performance audit aspects of the index evaluation standards, nor performance audit aspects of the guidelines of the nature of the operability of the guiding documents, due to the lack of targeted institutional norms, resulting in the government performance audit is difficult to in-depth.
6, the low quality of auditors. China's existing auditors of the knowledge structure, professional qualities, work ability and other aspects of the requirements of performance auditing there is still a big gap: (1) the auditor's practical knowledge is more, while the theoretical foundation is weak. The current auditors generally lack professional knowledge of public **** management, administrative regulations, financial and modern auditing techniques, and have little knowledge of government management. (2) More familiar with traditional auditing techniques and unfamiliar with modern auditing techniques. (3) Experienced in on-site operations, but less capable of comprehensively analyzing problems, and some personnel have lower levels of policy understanding and business skills. All of these have a direct impact on the effectiveness of government performance auditing.
Fourth, the promotion of government performance auditing countermeasures
The concept of performance auditing in China's government auditing work has begun to see the beginning, and already have the conditions to carry out performance audits, has come to the extent that must be carried out. However, we can not be the original work of stereotypes and knowledge structure to outline the performance audit, but should be in the new audit environment and modern technical methods on the platform of the construction of performance auditing. Specifically, the author believes that the following countermeasures should be highlighted:
1, strengthen the audit publicity, establish the concept of performance auditing. Performance auditing has become the mainstream of government auditing, not because of the developed countries to carry out more, we have come to such a conclusion, but the requirements of objective economic development, but also the audit mission of the audit institution decided. Although in our country to carry out performance auditing there are such and such difficulties, but these difficulties can not let people's minds, hold people's pace. Only to break the traditional concepts of people's constraints, in order to fundamentally improve people's attention to the degree of government performance auditing. So that whether from the government point of view, or from the audit staff or theoretical researchers point of view, will strengthen the importance of government performance auditing work, the implementation of the audit work will be more effective. Strengthen the government performance audit publicity is one of the ways to establish the concept of performance auditing, performance auditing publicity can be through a variety of forms, such as leadership in the important work of the meeting, to carry out professional training courses, through the media, etc., through the publicity, so that the concept of performance auditing y rooted in people's hearts.
2, deepen the reform of our government system. Deepen the reform of the government system, the establishment of sound public **** finance, change government functions, rationalize government relations, optimize the government structure, fundamentally solve the situation of China's government departments, inefficiency, is conducive to the construction of China's socialist rule of law economy, and to promote the government audit from a pure monitoring mechanism to the perfect incentive and constraints on the transformation of the property of public **** mechanism to solve the constraints on the development of the performance audit of the government of China. The deep-rooted institutional problems that constrain the development of China's government performance audit. Improvement in the efficiency of government departments can prompt them to devote themselves to the improvement of the efficiency of public **** property and the improvement of social welfare, and then will also pay more attention to the audit department of the public **** fiduciary economic responsibility to fulfill the situation of the effectiveness and efficiency of the audit. In this way, government performance auditing will also be developed in depth.
3, improve the performance audit laws and regulations. Laws and regulations is to carry out government performance auditing key link, because the audit according to law is the basic principle of auditing, only in the form of laws and regulations to determine the performance audit, the auditor in the audit have a law to follow. Therefore, we should seriously summarize the experience gained in performance evaluation in the government's economic responsibility and special funds audit, combined with the audit guidelines for financial income and expenditure audit, to develop a more systematic and operational government performance audit guidelines. In the guidelines, provisions should be made for the object of performance auditing, the purpose of auditing, the auditing procedures, and the basic form of the audit report. In view of the complexity of the specifics of government performance auditing, guidelines with the characteristics of each sector can be formulated in different categories. At the same time, the establishment of a set of scientific and feasible indicators and evaluation system is also one of the measures to carry out government performance auditing without delay. The scientific nature of the indicators can, to a certain extent, reflect the fairness. Performance audit indicators include the evaluation of economic efficiency and social efficiency. The evaluation of economic efficiency can refer to the evaluation of economic efficiency indicators of enterprises, and the evaluation of social efficiency can be based on different industries and different nature of the content. Since social benefit is a difficult to measure by quantitative indicators, and qualitative indicators are sometimes difficult to ensure fairness. Therefore, when formulating evaluation indicators for social benefits, some qualitative provisions with strong principles can be given. In addition, for the more elastic, easy to make the fairness of the project or the field of damage, through careful summary of experience and then make some supplementary nature of the provisions to continuously improve.
4, to deal with the relationship between performance auditing and traditional auditing. Auditors how to deal with government performance auditing and traditional audit of the relationship between the performance audit is related to the performance audit in our country can get the smooth development of one of the important issues. Foreign performance auditing from a certain degree of independence from traditional auditing. Because, foreign traditional audit carried out earlier, the audited unit of the authenticity of financial revenue and expenditure, the legitimacy of a certain guarantee. China is a different situation, the current fraud, fraud and other illegal, illegal phenomenon is still very serious, in this basis for government performance audit, can not be separated from the traditional audit. To be in the performance audit practice, to overcome the old habits and stereotypes of the constraints of the performance audit into the traditional audit, so that the performance audit lacks substance, can not jump out of the traditional audit of the circle of the problem. In specific practice, auditors should make a good audit plan, make a good audit investigation. If it is found that the financial income and expenditure activities of the audited unit are seriously inaccurate, the performance audit program can no longer be carried out and the traditional audit of authenticity and legality should be carried out. If only a part of the information found to be inaccurate or a small range of violations, depending on whether it affects the evaluation of performance audit indicators.
5, good government performance audit pilot. Government performance audits are extensive and difficult, the audit approach and methodology and the traditional audit is very different. In the current situation is not appropriate to carry out a comprehensive performance audit in all areas, the first is to do a good job of pilot work. Select public **** financial, investment and other key areas, key departments, capital investment, occupancy, strong policy and social concerns such as the focus of the project, actively carry out performance audits. Such as financial expenditures focus on administration, national security, regime building and other government operations and the maintenance of national interests in the field of science and technology education, environmental protection, public **** health and other public welfare institutions in the field of social welfare, social security, civil affairs and other areas of national relief, large-scale infrastructure construction, macroeconomic regulation to make up for the market deficiencies in the field. Therefore, some typical industries, units or projects can be selected for performance auditing. Strengthening the performance audit in the field of investment should not be delayed. According to the Audit Office of the relevant person in charge of the 1990-2003 investment audit shows that China's investment performance is very inconspicuous. There are also a lot of "performance engineering", "image engineering" has caused a huge amount of waste, performance audits have come to the time that must not be engaged. So the performance audit in the field of investment can be focused on infrastructure, environmental protection, public **** service facilities.
6, optimize the structure of the auditor, improve the quality of the auditor. Compared with the financial audit, performance auditing requires higher requirements, such as the need to master the public **** management, electronic computers, engineering, psychology and other aspects of knowledge, and most of the existing auditors lack this knowledge. Therefore, the existing auditors should be strengthened training to improve the theoretical quality and operational level of the auditors to enhance the Government's performance auditing capabilities; taking into account the single knowledge structure of the existing auditors, but also borrowing the strength of the civil audit and internal audit departments, in order to optimize the structure of the audit staff. In addition, the implementation of strict audit quality accountability system, audit inspection system and internal audit system to further clarify the audit responsibility of the auditors, standardize the audit behavior of the auditors to improve the performance of government performance audits.