A Survey of Factors Affecting Public Audit Institutions Performance: the Case of Kenya National Audit Office

Abstract

Public finance accountability is increasingly becoming important in the public sector. One means of effecting accountability is through auditing. The overall objective of this survey was to study the factors affecting the performance of the public audit institutions i.e Kenya National Audit Office in undertaking its constitutional mandate of auditing and reporting on the accounts of public sector institutions. This study adopted a survey research design. The target population of this study was the staffs located in Nairobi region. The researcher used quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze data. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to help analyze the collected data and reliability test was done to ensure that the research tools are consistent. The findings were presented in form of summarized tables with percentage scores and charts. Arising from the data analysis, presentation and interpretation, the research indicated that inadequate resources, lack of adequate training and development, inadequate knowledge on issues such as corporate governance, professionalism, integrity issues poses a challenge to a greater extent to the overall performance. Top management commitment to the overall strategy was found to be average while poor communication of the strategy was ranked among the factors affecting performance. The study revealed that auditors face serious problems ranging from factors such as low staff motivation, lack of adequate training and capacity building, resistance to change problems, political interference, environmental, communication and leadership problems in their line of duty. On the area of experience the organizations are served by well experienced officers only that they have no experience from other organizations meaning that new ideas are lacking thus the need to inject new blood especially in order to improve performance by bringing in new ideas. The researcher recommends more resource allocation from the government to the organization, the staffs to be sponsored for short courses in order to improve their skills, more incentives should be offered to the entire team so as to improve their commitment to the strategy implementation and drive the strategy holistically. The researcher gives a conclusion that even though there are a few areas where the organization is doing averagely well they fall short of the expectations of the general public.