ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the challenges for performance auditors in responding to a rapidly changing political and administrative environment while maintaining their independence. It focuses on the National Audit Office (NAO), the United Kingdom’s state audit institution. It considers the factors that shaped the NAO’s external environment between 2012 and 2017 – public expenditure cuts, the unusually unstable state of UK politics; the implications of the decision to leave the European Union; continuing reforms to public services; and the ongoing debate about trust in public life. The chapter examines how these and other factors shaped: how the NAO does its work, what work it does, and the changing nature of its relationships with external parties. It concludes that environmental factors have a profound impact on all three of these issues. Lessons for other producers of audit and evaluation outputs include the need to adapt tried and tested approaches; the importance of the usefulness of outputs produced, the need to be open to the external environment, the importance of protecting organizational reputation and credibility, and the need to respond to the increasingly competitive environment for knowledge, analysis, and insight.
