Audit Quality in Audits of Federal Programs by Non-Federal Auditors.
研究了非联邦审计师对联邦资助项目审计的质量，发现超过一半的审计报告存在重大缺陷，且州和地方审计师的质量优于独立公共会计师。
Abstract Grants for domestic assistance programs administered by the federal government, through state and local governments, exceed $100 billion per year. The federal government relies on independent public accountants and state/local auditors to perform audits of grant expenditures. This audit market is of special interest because there is minimal threat of litigation resulting from audit failures. This could result in audits of low quality. This study examines the quality of such audits, based on the results of desk reviews and quality control reviews conducted by the Inspectors General of various federal agencies. A desk review is limited to the content of the audit report itself. A quality control review has a much broader scope and includes an examination of the auditor's working papers and supporting documentation. Over a four year period, of those audit reports which were subject to desk review and to quality control review, 15.2 and 51.4% respectively were forced to be reissued with major changes or had significant inadequacies. The quality of audits performed by state and local auditors was superior to the quality of audits performed by independent public accountants.