The Impact of Performance Audit on Public Sector Organizations: The Case of Estonia

The results of a survey of 118 Estonian public officials show that auditees can perceive performance audit to be useful even if it does not lead to specific changes in policies or organizational practices. No trade-off between the accountability and improvement functions of performance audit could be observed, though a surprisingly low percentage of the respondents considered performance audit to have been used to hold the audited organization accountable for their actions. While the factors internal to the audit process – including the perceived expertise of the auditors, their openness to dialogue with the auditees and the quality of audit report – influenced the perceived usefulness of the audit, they had less bearing on the adoption of changes by the audited organizations. The study indicates that when parliamentarians pay attention to performance audit and when media attention leads to political debate, the adoption of changes recommended by the performance audit report is more likely.