Abstract

The history of public sector performance has been described extensively and demonstrates that there always was a concern for performance in the public sector (Bouckaert 1990, Williams 2003). However, its content, form and importance has changed over time. The history of managing performance has also been described extensively, and received a higher level of attention in the last 30 years with the so-called New Public Management (NPM). NPM has evolved, but the focus on performance and on managing performance has remained. Auditing performance is part of the dynamics of managing performance. This chapter will discuss the interactions of managing performance and auditing performance, more particularly the interactions of recent stages of managing performance, namely NPM, and of external performance audit, namely by Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs).