Muller wrapped up three weeks of nationally broadcast public hearings this week that focused on accountability in all government ministries and state-owned enterprises.
He said the key to improving accountability and getting more performance reviews is for the government to hire a permanent auditor general and to beef up the level of staffing in the audit office. The auditor general post — a lifetime appointment by the parliament — has been vacant for three years, and acting Auditor General Atmita Jonathan says her office is critically understaffed.
The Marshall Islands receives 70 percent of its annual budget of about $140 million from the United States, Taiwan and other donors. The U.S. has ratcheted up its demand for performance from large-scale grant funding it provides since a new funding agreement with the Marshall Islands came into force in 2004.
Muller hailed the first performance audit ever conducted by the auditor general on the government-owned Majuro Atoll Waste Company that was the subject of a recent hearing. “We need more audits like this,” Muller said.
The difference between a financial audit — which the auditor general’s office now focuses on — and a performance audit is the former concentrates solely on how money was used, while a performance audit reviews whether the agency being audited followed relevant laws and regulations, and met its service goals and objectives.
“The impact a government ministry is having — its performance — is what people want to know about,” Muller said.
During the hearings over the past three weeks, Muller and committee members repeatedly pressed government officials to achieve higher levels of service delivery to the public.
Muller said that evaluating performance is often difficult because only a few ministries are using performance-based budgeting, which links funding to expected results. But he said the Ministry of Finance is not using this new format for itself and he encouraged the ministry as well as other ministries and agencies not currently switched over to performance-based budgeting to adopt this method for spending government money.
“The committee is recommending that performance-based budgeting continue and expand,” he said.
Muller said his aim is for the Public Accounts Committee’s report on its three weeks of hearings to be submitted to the parliament at the end of this week so it can be used by the Appropriations Committee as it begins consideration of the nation’s fiscal year 2011 budget.
