Performance Audit and the New Public Management (NPM) Reforms: Addressing the Public Sector Inefficiency in Nigeria

With the advent of NPM in the public sector, the auditing profession has been elaborately transformed to include many other classes of audit. NPM has been a guiding public sector reform template for over 25 years. Performance audit is one of the audit exercises promoted by the NPM regime. Over the years, the emphasis on 3Es (efficiency, effectiveness and economy) has necessitated the government agencies in many countries around the globe to bring government activities under meticulous scrutiny. Thus, performance audit is a formal tool for evaluating 3Es in the public sector by ensuring that, conformity and compliance with the principles and procedures of the public governance are adequately guaranteed. Specifically, the performance audit practice is at the infant stage in Nigeria. Hence, public agencies that adopted the performance audit are poised to face unanticipated challenges. Therefore, driving from that emphasis, this study presents a multi-level experience of OECD countries on the performance audit. Explicitly, this study is a conceptual review of views and experiences of the OECD countries on the impact of the performance audit with regards to NPM reforms. Equally, the study also reflects on the consensus that, 3Es determines the public sector organizational performance

IT adoption by internal auditors in public sector: A conceptual study

This study is initiated by the interest in understanding Information Technology (IT) adoption by government internal auditors. With the tremendous development of IT in public sectors such as e-government that has been developed to support National IT and transformation agenda, the auditors also are expected to equip not only with the knowledge of IT but also with the tools required to work with this situation.The objectives of this study are to investigate the current IT adoption among internal auditors and to identify the factors that influence IT adoption or non-adoption.This study is expected to discover the current IT adoption practices by government internal auditors.The items for the factor that influence the usage or non-usage of IT in performing the audit tasks also will be catalogued and it will then help to design the model of IT adoption and to guide the future study in exploring IT adoption by internal auditors in public sector

Adoption of the performance measurement system in the Nigerian public sector: Challenges and prospects

Assessing the performance of organizations using the performance measurement system has gradually become a common practice in the public sector entities.This has been established to be a direct fall out of the ripple effect of the new public management (NPM).Adoption of the performance measurement system in the public sector world over (not particularly in Nigeria) has been experiencing a myriad of challenges.This is imperative to point out owing to the fact that, the processes of adoption have been difficult, monotonous and time-consuming.In some public sector organizations where the adoption has been successful, such feat was achieved after intense difficulties, trial and error.In Nigeria, for instance, the analytical challenges in the adoption of the performance measurement system are too apparent to be ignored. Conversely, it is quite interesting to highlight that, in some countries, the development of measures to manage and evaluate public sector performance has reached a strategic height, therefore tracking of output, outcomes and input have been reasonably straightforward and significant progress is somewhat recorded.Finally, it is a general consensus among the public sector managers and academia that, adoption of the system of performance measurement in the public sector is a powerful tool that guarantees improved performance, quality of decision making and service delivery

An Examination of Factors that Influence Employees’ Behavioral Intention to Use Electronic Revenue Collection System in Public Hospitals

The aim of this paper is to examine the factors that influence the behavioural intention of Nigerian federal hospitals employees to use the e-collection system. Three factors (Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Computer Self-efficacy) were considered in determining the behavioural intention of the employee to use the system. In achieving this, survey questionnaire instrument was used in collecting data from 72 e-collection users in some selected federal government hospitals. Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) 2.0 was used to analyze the data from the responses and the findings from the analysis revealed that all the three factors (Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use and Computer Self-efficacy) are significant in influencing employees’ intention to use the ecollection system. As such, it is hopeful that the result of this paper will provide an understanding of the underlying factors that influence public sector employees to use new technology in the workplace which will equally provide government with the information on the necessary areas to improve so as to foster its electronic government initiatives in the country

Performance Management Antecedents and Public Sector Organizational Performance: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

Using data from MDA-wide survey administered on the public sector organizations in the North-eastern part of Nigeria, the study examine some antecedents of the performance management practice and how these antecedents influenced public sector organizational performance. The hypotheses of the study were tested using the survey data from 63 public sector organizations notably ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Pearson zero-order correlation was used to analyze the hypothesized relationship. The study found that, certain antecedents such as performance measurement and institutional culture have significant positive association with public sector organizational performance. Thus, the study provides an avenue for MDAs in Nigeria and elsewhere to redesign, redefine and formulate policies for improving their hitherto unencouraging performance. The study also recommended that, more performance management mechanisms are needed to complement and improve the public sector efficiency. Keywords: Performance Management, Antecedents, Performance, Public Sector JEL Classifications: H11, H8

Examining CAATTs Implementation by Internal Auditors in the Public Sector

Computer Assisted Audit Tools and Techniques (CAATTs) are not new for auditors, and it needs to be adopted to gain the audit efficiency and effectiveness especially in a current era of technology. This paper examined the implementation of CAATTs by internal auditors in the public sector. Accordingly, this research reports the results from 12 interviews made with internal audit departments in public sector in both federal and state level in Malaysia. This research found that the implementation of CAATTs by internal auditors in public sector is still low due to lack of expertise, high implementation and maintenance cost, limited access of auditee’s data, and most of them prefer to conduct the audit manually. Furthermore, it is not mandatory for them to use CAATTs. The evidence is a contrast with the encouragement made by the government to improve the IT usage in public sector. The results implied that training for future auditors in CAATTs to ensure the successful implementation is crucial. For CAATTs to be a success, the head of internal audit also must have the awareness about the importance of CAATTs as well as enforcement of its implementation

Performance management antecedents and public sector organizational performance: empirical evidence from Nigeria

Using data from MDA-wide survey administered on the public sector organizations in the North-eastern part of Nigeria, the study examine some antecedents of the performance management practice and how these antecedents influenced public sector organizational performance.The hypotheses of the study were tested using the survey data from 63 public sector organizations notably ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).Pearson zero-order correlation was used to analyze the hypothesized relationship.The study found that, certain antecedents such as performance measurement and institutional culture have significant positive association with public sector organizational performance.Thus, the study provides an avenue for MDAs in Nigeria and elsewhere to redesign, redefine and formulate policies for improving their hitherto unencouraging performance. The study also recommended that, more performance management mechanisms are needed to complement and improve the public sector efficiency

The Influence of Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use on the Continuous Intention to Use Electronic Collection System in Nigerian Hospitals: A Conceptual Approach

The use of electronic systems in organizations is a commonplace phenomenon in both public and private organizations around the globe. However, previous studies have shown that electronic systems and information technology in public sector organizations of developing countries are not been adopted and used. In Nigeria, a new system – electronic collection system was introduced in federal hospitals to replace the traditional cash collections. Its main purpose is to keep track cash collections and serve as an effective tool for internal control purposes. Therefore, this study proposes a conceptual framework based on two factors (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) with a view to investigating the influence of the aforementioned factors on the continuous intention of the hospitals' employees to use systems. The conceptual framework is an extraction from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and is expected to provide an insight in explaining the influence of these two factors on the employees’ continuous intention in using the system. Finally, it is projected that future empirical studies with this framework can enhance the understanding of Nigerian public sector employees’ behavior on technology use

Accounting information system user satisfaction: a survey of Indonesian state-owned banks

The objective of this study is to explore accounting information system user satisfaction, particulary, this study examines the level of accounting information system user satisfaction among state-owned banks in Indonesia. User satisfaction is generally used as a proxy for the successful implementation of an information system. The findings show that users are satisfied with the implementation of accounting information system. Specifically, majority of respondents indicate their satisfaction in terms of the content, accuracy of the system, format of the information, ease of use of the system, and timeliness of the accounting information system among the Indonesian stateowned banks. Thus, the management of state-owned banks in Indonesia are expected to maintain the good accounting information systems and improve the quality of the systems in order to achieve excellent services and further enhance the operations of the Indonesian state-owned banks