External Surveys

Who we survey

We survey our main client—Parliament—and those responsible for oversight of the organizations that we audit—Chairs of the Boards of Directors of Crown corporations and Chairs of Audit Committees. We also survey senior management of the organizations we audit.

Methodology

Parliamentary survey—We periodically survey members of selected parliamentary committees to whom our performance audits are directed, to obtain their assessment of the value of the audits we presented to them in the past year. We conducted surveys of parliamentarians in 2007, 2008 and 2010.

The parliamentary surveys are administered by an external firm to ensure the anonymity of respondents. In May 2010 the survey questionnaire was sent to 50 Parliamentarians. A total of 21 completed questionnaires were returned for a response rate of 42 percent. Given the response rate, the results should be interpreted with some degree of caution, and cannot be generalized to the entire population. We publish key results of the surveys in our annual Performance Report.

Post-audit surveys administered by the Office—We survey the Chairs of the Boards of Directors of Crown corporations following the delivery of special examination reports and the Chairs of Audit Committees of organizations following the delivery of financial audit reports, to obtain their assessment of the value of our work. We also survey senior management of the organizations we audit.

These surveys are administered by the Office. The average response rate in recent years has varied from 49 percent to 83 percent depending on the type of audit and the type of respondent. The size of the surveyed population ranges from 5 for Chairs of the Boards of Directors of Crown corporations, to more than one hundred for Chairs of Audit Committees. While most of the results cannot be generalized to the entire population due to the response rates, the surveys provide us with valuable information on our performance and help us to identify areas for improvement.The Auditor General receives and reviews all survey responses. Key results of the surveys are published in our annual Performance Report.

Survey questions

The survey questions differ depending on the survey recipient and the type of audit. The most recent survey questions are included in the attachments below:

• Parliamentary survey (PDF 305 KB)
• Survey following a financial audit (PDF 374 KB)
• Survey following a performance audit (PDF 381 KB)
• Survey following a special examination (PDF 383 KB)