Budget audit in public financial management and control system: An international comparative analysis

The new understanding of public financial management, which is effective in the world, has brought together concepts such as transparency, accountability, efficiency, economy and efficiency. In order to develop solutions to efficiency and productivity problems, especially in the public sector, budget reforms were made with the new public financial management approach and performance-based budgeting emerged at the end of this process. This process of change in the public budget system has also affected the public accountability and the audit of the budget. Since the purpose of performance-based budgeting is to use public resources effectively, economically and efficiently as well as legal compliance, it is envisaged that the audit activity on the budget will be carried out accordingly, and in this context, the scope of the supervision has been redefined in line with the stated purpose. In this context, performance-based budget system has been adopted in many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the duties and responsibilities of supreme audit institutions have also changed in this direction and their role in performance budgeting has increased. In this study, the way of accountability in OECD countries implementing performance-based budget system will be discussed in terms of supreme audit institutions. In the study, the performance-based budget systems of the USA, South Korea, France and Turkey, which are among the OECD countries, and the supreme audit institutions that carry out the external audit of the budget were examined. In this context, a comparison was made with the data in the international performance budgeting database of the OECD and the survey data made by the OECD on the role of supreme audit institutions in the performance-based budget system, and the similar and different aspects of the selected countries were revealed.