Scrutinizing Public Expenditures Assessing the Performance of Public Accounts Committees

Public Accounts Committees in the Commonwealth: oversight, effectiveness, and governance

“…Jacobs et al (2007) argue instead that PACs are more effective when created by an act of parliament because this means that they enjoy the support of parliament and are more likely to be put good use. Some research carried under the auspices of World Bank Institute (WBI) (Stapenhurst et al, 2005;Pelizzo & Stapenhurst, 2007) employed the survey data that WBI had collected in 2002. The data analyses performed in these studies provided some information as to how PACs are institutionalised, as to whether PACs are chaired by MPs belonging to the government or the opposition, as to what is the size of a PAC, how frequently certain outcomes are achieved, what factors are believed to be important for the achievement of such results.…”

“…Stapenhurst et al (2005) provided the most extensive description of the data. used these data to discuss what makes PACs work and concluded that the success of these committees depended not only on the formal powers at their disposal but also on the presence of what they defined as 'conditional factors', while Pelizzo and Stapenhurst (2007) showed that the importance of success factors varied across regions and suggested that the success of PACs depended, among other things, on access to free and reliable information and if they were adequately staffed.…”

“…Is the productivity of PACs enhanced when they are chaired, as the literature has long believed, by an opposition MP (McGee, 2002;Stapenhurst et al, 2005)? Does the presence of a larger contingent of opposition MPs make PACs more active?…”

“…While several studies (Stapenhurst et al, 2005;Pelizzo & Stapenhurst, 2007) have analysed the perceived importance of the formal powers, composition and committee practices for the successful performance of the PAC, no study, to the best of our knowledge, has investigated the frequency with which certain results are achieved or the relationship between the amount of activities performed by the PACs and their ability to achieve certain goals. The goals that were listed in the 2002 survey were: the frequency with which the government responds favourably to the recommendations formulated by the PAC, the frequency with which it implements the recommendations formulated by the PACs in their reports, the frequency with which legislation was modified in the wake of the committee's work, and the frequency with which the integrity of the information provided by the government was improved as a consequence of the committee work, the frequency with which legal action was taken against officials who had violated the law and the frequency with which disciplinary action was taken against officials who had violated administrative guidelines.…”

Public Accounts Committees in the Pacific Region

“…While a third stream of research (McGee, 2002;Stapenhurst et al,2005) suggested the success of PAC depends on the way PAC members act and interact with one another.…”