Relative usefulness of public audit reports versus pressure groups’ activities in enforcing accountability in public sector

The purpose of this study was to find the relative usefulness of public audit reports versus pressure groups’ activities in enforcing accountability in public sector, main issue being ability of the two to enforce public sector accountability by their activities and reports. The study investigated existence of an audit expectation gap in public sector, reasons for pressure groups seeming to have higher ability to enforce public sector accountability and association between CAG reports and pressure groups’ activities. The study was explanatory in nature and made use of primary data collected by way of a survey from respondents who were categorized into two groups. The first group consisted of individual respondents from the general public while the second group consisted of respondents from the National Audit Office, three municipal councils of Dar es Salaam region and pressure groups. A total of 146 questionnaires from both groups were used for analysis. Data was organized in tables, frequencies and charts through the use of descriptive analysis to make it meaningful by help of SPSS software. Findings indicated that there is indeed an expectation gap in the public sector i.e. the quality of auditors’ work is below the level expected by the general public. Moreover, the performance gap seemed to be higher than either the standard and unreasonableness gap, putting more blame on auditors’ performance for the existing gap. The general public also seemed to believe that pressure groups are more powerful in enforcing accountability because they are free to air their views in whichever manner while public auditors are guided by specific standards and therefore may need to be very careful on how they report their findings and thus doing more of an advisory work. Pressure groups also asserted that they complement on audit reports rather than substituting them. It is recommended that the audit profession in Tanzania should find ways of reducing the perceived audit expectation gap by educating the public on the primary role of auditors. In addition public auditors and pressure groups should find more ways of working together for greater effectiveness in enforcing accountability in public sector as it has been noted that they complement each other.