The reporting of performance information by South African national government departments: An adequacy analysis

Performance information is credible when it assists in accurately assessing departments’ progress towards the achievement of their goals—the cornerstone of performance reporting. In South Africa it is a legislated requirement for government departments to report annually on the performance of the entity against predetermined objectives. The purpose of this paper is to perform a qualitative analysis of the reporting of performance against pre-determined objectives by national government departments and to determine by comparison whether national government departments in South Africa have improved in the quality of the reporting of their performance information from the 2009/10 to the 2010/11 financial years. The objective of the audit of performance information by the AGSA is to determine whether the reported performance of a government department is useful, reliable and compliant to legislative and other official requirements. The results of this study clearly indicate that there are still major deficiencies in the reporting of performance information and that there was no material improvement from the 2009/10 to the 2010/11 financial years.