CCAF began working to improve Public Performance Reporting in 1999. Since that time, CCAF has made significant contributions to the overall improvement and increased usability of PPRs. Our significant contributions are itemized below, by output.

CCAF’s Commitment to Improving Leadership

• In 2001 CCAF published Going Public: Leadership for a Transparent Government. Based upon interviews with leaders from the public and private sector across Canada, Going Public provided a frame of reference for discussing and addressing the human factors that can affect public performance reporting. A major output of this study was a framework to assist managers and executives in providing effective leadership towards performance goals.

Reporting and Auditing Practices

• In the first phase of the Program, CCAF developed and communicated a baseline understanding of issues involved in reporting and auditing performance. Through their participation in a National Symposium, managers, reporting specialists and professionals from across the country helped CCAF to develop Public Performance Reporting — Perspectives, Issues, and Considerations. CCAF used surveys to understand in more detail how reporting advances and auditing practices relate to one another, and how advances in public performance reporting affect auditors and audit approaches. This symposium highlighted important issues of performance reporting and created a nucleus for a network of leading practitioners.
• CCAF used surveys to understand how reporting advances and auditing practices relate to one another, and how advances in public performance reporting affect auditors and audit approaches. Auditing Public Performance and Reports: Legislative Audit Practices in Canada — Baseline 2000 summarized the views of Canadian legislative auditors on the impact of performance reporting practices on current audit practices and their forecasts of future impacts.
• A companion piece — Auditing Public Performance and Reports: Leading Legislative Audit Practices Internationally — Baseline 2001 — set out results of a survey of ten offices considered to lead international practice.

Bridging the Gap: Users and Uses Work

• In May 2004 CCAF held a symposium for leaders of public performance initiatives called Advancing to the Next Level. Representatives from seven senior governments participated in a leading practitioner’s symposium to discuss their experiences pertaining to the implementation of Reporting Principles. Their views revolved around getting value from investments in the public reporting of performance plans, and achievements. This symposium provided a baseline understanding of current users and uses of public performance reports in leading Canadian practice, offered insight on how public performance reporting is being integrated into the overall governance and management agendas and demonstrated how practitioners are moving reporting to the next level.
• In June 2006, CCAF published the final report in our long-running and highly successful Public Performance Reporting research program. Users and Uses: Toward Producing and Using Better Public Performance Reporting — Perspectives and Solutions notes that governments have made much progress in improving their public performance reports — and that they still have a long way to go to make them truly useful to such key audiences as elected officials, journalists, non-governmental organizations and the public.

Reporting Principles

CCAF’s largest contribution to public performance reporting has been reporting principles. Domestic and international audit offices have recognized CCAF’s contribution to public performance reporting.

• Through a study group of the Canadian Council of Legislative Auditors (CCOLA) CCAF contributed a discussion paper — Principles for Building a Performance Report (1999) — that centred the project on the need for rigor and for tracking achievement against targets.
• CCAF recognized that different stakeholders in the performance reporting process have different reasons for being interested in performance, and different views on what is important and how it should be presented. We began by consulting legislative auditors. Senior executives from the governments of Alberta, Canada and Ontario then worked with CCAF to develop Reporting Principles — a Management Perspective (2001). It pointed particularly to the need for reporting to focus on fewer things, to be more penetrating in its discussion of them, and to be more transparent about the basis on which it has been prepared. CCAF then synthesized the views of auditors and managers and consulted federal and provincial legislators.
• In 2001 CCAF published Reporting Performance to Legislatures and Canadians: Toward Guiding Principles. This document was prepared to support consultations with legislators. It synthesizes material from the legislative audit and management views on reporting principles.

The final report, Reporting Principles: Taking Public Reporting to a New Level, was enriched by these suggestions and was issued to CCAF members in late 2002 and to the public in early 2003. At the same time, CCAF’s Board approved a long term strategy and related work plan for ongoing implementation support and capacity development. CCAF is now engaged on implementing the plan, which aims to:

• raise general awareness of the importance of reporting principles and CCAF’s recommendations in that regard;
• encourage and support adoption and reflection of these principles in the detailed guidance, methodology and criteria issued in specific jurisdictions; share knowledge and experience across jurisdictions; and
• accelerate and support the development of accepted standards for performance reporting in Canada.

CCAF-FCVI’s influence

CCAF’s 2002 publication Performance Reporting: Bringing it to a new level widely recognized for its innovation and clarity. Since then, the principles have been adopted in a variety of ways by a number of governments across Canada and around the globe. 

• Canada’s legislative audit community is using the principles as the basis for audit criteria that it is developing in relation to performance reporting.
• The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants developed statements of recommended practice for performance reporting using the principles.
• And the Governmental Accounting Standards Board in the United States cite our work in their discussions of the development and use of performance information.
• British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec all incorporated the 9 principles into their performance reporting framework or used them as guidance in developing their own principles.
• The Legislative Audit Community has used the principles for their performance audit programs.