Study On The Comparison Of Government Performance Audit Between China And The USA

As the advanced stage of development of government audit, government performance audit originated from economical auditing of the army medal contract conducted by the British Treasury and the Audit Department in the late nineteenth century. After the World WarⅡand the eruption of global economic crisis, the governmental expenditure of industrial countries continued to expand and the expectation on the achievement of the government by the public increased gradually, The demand for the information of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the government expenditure by the public rose imminently. Under the pressure of booming sense of democracy of the public, the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries established performance audit system based on their national conditions in the 40s of the 20th century respectively. Hence the government performance audit generated. Since the 70s of the 20th century, government performance audit had developed not only in the areas of legalization and regularization worldwide, but also the audit scope and the dimensions of performance evaluation. Ushering into the 21st century, government performance audit had become a worldside development tendency and a symbol of democracy as well as public administration level.China's Government Performance Audit, also known as "economic efficiency audit" or "efficiency audit", was born after the establishment of the restoration of auditing system of the People's Republic of China in 1980s, and fully implemented in 21st century after the exploration in economic audit of specific funds in 1990s. Compared with the United States, China's government performance audit applies a top-down forceful auditing strategy centered upon learning due to the weak civic consciousness and relatively strong government forces. Currently, government auditing environment is still not perfect and short of comprehensive performance evaluation system and standard to provide guidance. This caused the insufficient of audit scope, lack of audit preciseness and large part of the performance audit is still belonged to the further extension of the financial audit function. With the awareness of democracy, market economy, the transformation of government functions, government performance audit in China is in urgent need for further development. This is not only for constructing and implementing the scientific concept of development, establishing conservation-minded society, but also for promoting "unlimited government" to "limited government" changes so as to improve government performance management, and ultimately achieve the purpose of kind governance, given the fact that in the existing administrative system audit authority turns into a government "big internal audit" pattern. In this context, the current papers selects the United States and China to make a comparison of government performance audit from the perspective of the theory of generation background and theoretical framework as well as the practice of case comparison between the two governments in order to summarize the reasons for differences in the development of performance audit, and give constructive suggestions with Chinese characteristics on government performance audit based on the research of experience verification.This paper takes the view that both the U.S. and China's performance audit adopt principal-agent theory, institutional change theory, new public management theory as the theoretical basis:(1) the principal-agent theory provides the basis for the generation and development of Government Performance Audit. Under the framework of justice, people are masters of the country and public power authorized by the people. Therefore, Representative Democracy in the horizontal dimension of the democratic type of two-level principal-agent relationships (people-parliament-government) and the vertical dimension of the multi-level administrative-type agency relationship (the central government-at all levels of government) is officially formed. With asymmetric information and incomplete contracts, government performance audit naturally builds an option to solve government agency problem. (2) Theory of institutional change provides the basis for changes of Government Performance Audit. Government performance audit changes from financial audit to performance audit with the balancing process between principal and the trustees of stakeholders under the environmental pressure. In the traditional model of government audit, government audit oversight-way up, and the audit showed more vertical dimensions of the supervision process of the agency relationship, focusing on the authenticity of financial and legal auditing in modern government audit mode. With the civic consciousness of the profound knowledge and power back to the responsibility and accountability for institutional building of responsible government as the inherent logic of principal-agent relationship between the level of the dimension of supervision and being supervised relationship began to appear. Government Auditing has been increasingly concerned about the Government's economy, efficiency and effectiveness use of public resources and government performance audit become the focus of government auditing. (3) Government performance management as the core of the new public management theory should focus on management activities, outputs and outcomes. Concerned about the public sector to provide services directly to efficiency and quality, the Government should establish a results-based performance management system and draw market competition mechanism and performance management objectives in the government management, the changing rules is strict performance targets for the control of the troops reached the final through the performance to be investigated whether the administration and management responsibilities. This theory provides methodological basis for the government performance audit development which adopts the performance management system as the main monitoring and evaluation method. Government audit of the national economy in the macroeconomic surveillance system is running an important part to coordinate with all the other operating systems, and to promote the national economy healthy and orderly development of macroscopic systems.。In terms of the background that cultivates the birth of Performance audit, U.S. political system which centers upon the separation of powers lay the institutional foundation for performance audit; the regard of performance management gives a concept of support, and the successful transformation in major historical events provides a good opportunity. Meanwhile the government performance audit could not enjoy a sound development without the boost of a number of Comptrollers and Auditor Generals. Compared with the United States, China's Government Performance Audit imposes a top-down approach through forceful learning. It was born out of the micro-economic enterprises. Audit, so far, lacks definite and complete legal basis. As far as theoretical framework is concerned, the United States government performance audit focuses on the type of decision-benificial, yet our country expects to achieve the lifting of public accountability and decision-beneficial effect; From the types of audits and audit concepts, the U.S. government performance audit concentrates more on the effects of audit, taking into account both the economy and efficiency. However, we emphasize the uniform of economy, efficiency and effectiveness; From the performance audit standards, the U.S. government performance auditing standards, including macro and micro levels, are encouraged to be made by the auditees themselves to improve the recognition of the results of performance audit, but our current government performance auditing standards are not sufficient and devoid of non-financial indicators; From the use of audit reports and audit findings, the U.S. government performance audit recommendations are more specific, and audit findings emphasize transparency, openness, but our audit reports are adjusted purposefully with decision on punishment. Moreover, from 2003 onwards, the audit results are gradually announced; from auditors' background, the U.S. government performance auditors' professional backgrounds are complex with higher levels of computer use, yet our performance audit staffs focus on "financial model", and the level of computer that's used in auditing needs to be improved. Seeing the theoretical basis of the two countries this article has selected early and recent performance audit of the government practice as typical cases based on which this is found that China's Government Performance Audit started later than the United States nearly three decades. In terms of auditing systerm, China's government performance audit is an administrative type while the United States is an audit system that's based on legislation; From the choice of audit projects, China tends to focus on planning, and put too much emphasis on the representation and influence of the project, while ignoring planning and regularization; From the contents of the audit, China's performance audit is a comprehensive type and combined with fiscal and financial validity audit, while the U.S. Government Accountability Office usually conducts a single performance audit; From the audit recommendations, China's focus on findings transforms from the internal control system to mechanism and institution system, while the U.S. government would continue to emphasize performance audit of internal control and give recommendations for management; From the continuity of contents, more emphasis is given by the U.S. Government Performance Audit on the continious following-up auditing.On the basis of comparison of sino-American performance audit both in theory and practice, this paper reasons for the differences through empirical tests. This research concludes that audit system exerts a significant influence over government performance audit. As for other factors, the U.S. government performance audit levels are determined mainly by government expenditure scale and cultural and educational development, while China's government performance levels are determined mainly by the level of economic development. Given that the difficulty searching and accumulation of indicators on democratic development, we can not find the impact of democratic index on the level of government performance audit, which thus becomes a major defect of this dissertation. This paper takes the view that to promote the development of government performance audit with Chinese characteristics, we should speed up the development of performance audit, actively cultivate civic awareness, strengthen the sense of governmental responsibility, advance socialism market economy, deepen the standardized construction of government performance audit and auditing system, transform audit concept, establish a results-based performance audit concept, reform the budget management system and further optimize audit system.