ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AUDITS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

Abstract The feedback supreme audit institutions (SAI) provide from their audits of public funds and property owned by the national and local governments is critical to the audited governments and public authorities, while also important information for both the professional and general public. The article seeks to assess the performance of the SAIs in the Visegrád Four (V4) countries by evaluating hypotheses that assess the effectiveness of the audits they conduct. Data for the analysis came from annual reports of the institutions and interviews conducted with their staff. The evaluation covers sixteen years (2005-2020) and the five hypotheses established in this article were assessed using the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients. In general, a conclusion could be drawn from the analysis that the volume of new audit findings was not influenced by the number of audits from previous years or the number of recommendations made therein. On the other hand, the relationship between the number of audits conducted and the number of criminal complaints filed was seen as statistically significant. The public sector works slightly differently in all countries, but the SAI needs to be able to identify and point out the most significant systemic issues concerning the various areas of the state economy. Keywords: public administration; audits conducted; audit findings; Supreme audit office, Visegrád Four (V4) countries.