As citizens, we need reliable and timely information about the performance of public entities to ask valid questions of those who govern and lead them. Public entities are required to report on:
- the amount of public money they have spent;
- the outputs they have delivered for that money; and
- the results they have achieved.
If public entities' reporting is not timely, the information they provide is less relevant and proper accountability is more difficult to achieve.
My staff took a "snapshot" of how well public entities met their reporting deadlines during 2013/14. This report sets out the results of that analysis and discusses why some entities are not meeting their obligations.
This is my first report on the timeliness of reporting for the entire public sector. Before now, we have included information about the timeliness of entities' reporting in broader reports to Parliament about our audits of different groups of public entities.