| Written by Mark Funkhouser,
|
Near the end of January Ed Wolf called me. Ed was an assistant city manager and director of public works, and, after 35 years with the city, one of the most well respected individuals within our city’s government. He was retiring and wanted to tell me how much my work had benefited both the city and his department. He said, “You’ve been a real friend to public works.” I wish Robert Behn could have heard that conversation.
Behn’s book Rethinking Democratic Accountability, is a comprehensive attack on those persons and institutions that make up what David Walker, the head of the U.S. General Accounting Office, has referred to as “the accountability community.” Behn writes: What do we mean by accountability? Whatever we mean today by the concept and process of accountability, it is – in practice – very linear, hierarchical, and unidirectional. The simple phrase we use – “hold people accountable” – dramatizes the character of the relationship.One person is holding another person accountable. There is an accountability holder and an accountability holdee – an accountability punisher and an accountability punishee. It is a superior-subordinate relationship. The superior holds the subordinate accountable. The superior punishes the subordinate. The subordinate has no rights or leverage. The subordinate can only cringe in fear.
In a section entitled “The Bane of Performance Auditing,” Behn first points out that Peter
Drucker outlined the need for performance auditing in government more than 30 years ago. Behn quotes Drucker as advocating “an independent agency that compares the results of policies against expectations and that, independent of pressures from the executive as well as from the legislature, reports to the public any program that does not deliver.”
Behn then launches into a scathing denunciation of performance auditing. Among his
charges are that auditors want to exert exclusive domain over accountability for performance; auditors seek the ability to define the terms and expectations used to judge performance and they seek the ability to punish those found wanting in performance. He asserts that, because of the tools and methods auditors use and because of what he regards as the unique limitations of auditing, performance auditing must inevitably become compliance auditing.
Finally, Behn concludes that, “we ought not even to use the phrase ‘performance audit,’ lest we give the auditors the excuse to assert a unique, professional claim to the task of creating performance accountability.”
Behn underestimates the amount of corruption and abuse of power that has occurred in government and underestimates the corrosive effect of that abuse on the basic legitimacy of government. He overestimates the strength and power of the accountability mechanisms and institutions that exist. He quotes Peter Drucker about the need for performance auditing in government but then dismisses performance auditing based, apparently, on his perception of current practice. No doubt the current practice of performance auditing is flawed, and his understanding of the nature of these flaws is close to the mark. (In point of fact, no one knows because rigorous empirical analysis of the actual practice of performance auditing is virtually nonexistent.) However, to the extent that performance auditing is practiced in the ways he describes, then the audit function should be improved, not abolished, because where Professor Behn is most wrong is in the fact that he misses what Drucker saw – the urgent need for performance auditing and the potential for performance auditing to fill an essential role in effective
democratic government.
We ought to take note of Behn’s views because of his position of influence in public administration and because of the elements of truth in his criticisms. Those who shape the practice of auditing, including the members of the Government Auditing Standards Advisory Council and the leadership of GAO, ought to give Behn’s work a careful look and perhaps invite him to share his views with them in person.
If I ever meet Professor Behn, I’ll tell him about the call from Ed Wolf. We’ve audited the public works department 22 times in my tenure in Kansas City. I doubt that Ed ever “cringed in fear” at the prospect of one of our audits. And I think that, over the long haul, the audits improved the performance of his department. I think he shares that view, that’s why he referred to me as “a friend of public works.”
|
Funkhouser on Auditing