First, the meaning of government performance audit
Performance evaluation is a performance audit conducted by an independent organization or individual in the form of authorization or entrustment. It refers to an independent supervision activity in which independent audit institutions or personnel use audit procedures and methods to supervise, evaluate and verify the rationality, economy and effectiveness of the economic activities of the audited units or projects, put forward suggestions for improvement, and promote their management and efficiency.
Second, the status of China's performance audit
In recent years, the economic responsibility audit and special fund audit of leading cadres have emerged in China, which not only examine their authenticity, compliance and legitimacy, but also evaluate their economy, efficiency and effectiveness, indicating that the concept of performance audit has begun to sprout and grow in China.
From 2000/kloc-0 to 2002, the investment audit organized the audit of "two reforms with the same price" in rural power grid, the audit investigation of "one fund and one fee" in civil aviation and the audit of focusing on urban projects, from which we actively explored the way of performance audit and achieved initial results; Foreign capital audit has also accumulated several years of experience in conducting performance audit of international aid projects. According to the requirements of the Montreal Protocol, two projects that received grants from the World Bank implemented quota production, production reduction or closure measures for ozone-depleting substance production enterprises or production lines, involving related enterprises in more than ten provinces and cities across the country, and conducted audit evaluation.
Third, China's government performance audit problems
(A) there is no clearly applicable performance standard for government performance audit.
In the process of government performance audit, there must be a standard to guide audit activities, measure audit facts and identify the quality of economic benefits, which is the performance standard. Performance standard is the assessment point for management or auditors to measure or evaluate the actual effect, the scale to measure the advantages and disadvantages of economic benefits, and the basis for auditors to analyze, evaluate and issue audit opinions. 65438+ 1,1June, 1999, The Rules for Evaluating the Operating Performance of State-owned Capital, the Operating Rules for Evaluating the Operating Performance of State-owned Capital, and the Interpretation of the Indicators for Evaluating the Operating Performance of State-owned Capital issued by the Ministry of Finance on June 29th of the same year can be regarded as supporting laws and regulations for performance auditing. In addition, at present, there are no specific provisions on performance auditing, and auditors do not have a generally accepted auditing standard that is applicable to all situations. In this case, there is no basis for evaluating performance, which will undoubtedly affect the quality of performance audit and the credibility of audit conclusions.
(B) the government audit can not fully implement the performance audit
At present, most of the government performance audit is aimed at capital construction investment and financial business, while the performance audit is rarely carried out on the expenditure and special funds of major public departments, namely administrative institutions. At the same time, state-owned enterprises are the earliest areas to carry out economic benefit audit. However, in recent years, with the transformation of the operating mechanism of state-owned enterprises, the gradual establishment of modern enterprise system and effective incentive and restraint mechanism, the management mode of state-owned assets has been gradually reformed and improved, and paying attention to enterprise performance has increasingly become the conscious behavior of enterprise managers. It seems that the performance of these enterprises is no longer the focus of government audit, and there is a tendency to tilt towards internal audit. However, at present, a prominent problem of state-owned enterprises is the performance of foreign investment. Many non-performing assets are caused by investment decision-making mistakes, poor management, or turning public into private. In addition, with the rise of government procurement, the audit of government procurement activities has been carried out for several years. At present, the main concern is authenticity and compliance, and little consideration is given to the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the whole procurement activities. 3) The relevant departments have insufficient understanding of the importance of performance auditing.
In the field of audit in China, the cognition of performance audit is still limited to a relatively small range, and quite a few auditors have only some initial impressions of this term, but as for its actual content and how to operate, they still know very little. Judging from the only literature at present, most of them still stay in the introduction of relevant foreign situations. There is even a view that performance auditing is a product of western countries, which is not in line with China's national conditions. In the case of heavy audit tasks, it seems that it is of little significance to engage in such fancy things. It is true that the phenomenon of accounting information distortion is still common in China, and it is indeed difficult to carry out performance audit on this basis. However, it is gratifying that the leaders of audit institutions at all levels pay more and more attention to performance audit, and their voices are getting higher and higher, which can be seen from their speeches at various business meetings.
Fourth, the countermeasures to solve the problem of government performance audit in China
(A) to improve the understanding of the majority of government auditors on performance auditing, and at the same time improve the relevant professional level and skills. Audit institutions should not only widely publicize performance audit through various channels, such as professional publications, seminars and forums, business meetings, etc. , but also actively and widely organize the business training of performance auditing knowledge, so that most government auditors can gradually master the basic knowledge of performance auditing in combination with their professional skills and apply performance auditing methods in practice. At present, the best way is to cooperate with the performance audit of a certain field or industry and conduct pre-trial training. Pay attention to broaden the thinking of auditors, on the one hand, make auditors have the ability to innovate and find problems different from financial audit; On the other hand, we can treat or solve the problems found in the audit with the concept of joint development. It is necessary to carry out government environmental training, so that auditors can deeply understand government work and form valuable judgments on government performance. It is necessary to carry out training in performance auditing methods and techniques, focusing on improving the performance auditing ability and experience of auditors. It is necessary to carry out skills training for specific performance audit projects, such as statistics, social science and computer technology.
(2) Appropriately expand the scope of performance auditing, appropriately select pilot projects, and continue to promote the exploration of performance auditing. The selected pilot project should be targeted and representative, and it should not only consider the possible impact and role of the pilot project in society, but also consider whether it is a problem that the relevant government decision-making departments pay more attention to, and also consider the audit difficulty and audit cost. In the next few years, China's performance audit estimation is still in the trial stage. Therefore, we should focus on those projects that are relatively easy to operate and have great reference value. When carrying out performance audit, we should combine it with financial audit as far as possible, so as to make use of the results of financial audit, reduce duplication of work and improve work efficiency. In the case that the objective conditions are limited and the two cannot be carried out at the same time, we should also make full use of the information obtained in the previous financial audit.
(3) Establish the legal and regulatory basis for performance auditing.
Legal basis is the key link to carry out performance audit, because auditing according to law is the basic principle of auditing. Only when the performance audit is determined in the form of laws and regulations can auditors have laws to follow when auditing. First of all, we should conscientiously sum up the experience of performance evaluation in economic responsibility audit and special fund audit, and formulate more systematic and operational performance audit standards in combination with the audit standards of fiscal revenue and expenditure audit. The standards should make specific provisions on performance audit objects, audit purposes, audit procedures and the basic format of audit reports. In view of the complexity of performance audit, standards with the characteristics of various industries can be formulated in different categories. Secondly, establishing a scientific and feasible index evaluation system is also one of the urgent measures to carry out performance audit. The scientificity of indicators can reflect fairness to a certain extent. Performance audit indicators include the evaluation of economic benefits and social benefits. Economic benefit evaluation can refer to the economic benefit evaluation of enterprises, and social benefit evaluation can be carried out according to different industries and different contents. Because social benefits are difficult to be measured by quantitative indicators, qualitative indicators are sometimes difficult to ensure fairness.