Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) play an active role in the government's accountability to the parliament. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are a different route used to deliver infrastructure-based public services by private sector entities compared to traditional public procurement. Due to their nature, PPPs raise specific issues related to transparency for public accountability and SAIs, through the independent and competent audit they provide, may enhance the information content of the accountability relationship between the government and the parliament. We conducted a documentary analysis of 16 PPP audit reports issued by the Portuguese Court of Auditors (CoA) to analyze the audit process and outputs. Overall, our evidence suggests that the CoA, through the audit reports, reduced the information asymmetry by disclosing relevant information for more comprehensive public scrutiny and political accountability of PPPs and made several recommendations towards better PPP governance and management. Furthermore, our findings corroborate the two functions of SAIs, which can both be found in the same audit report: the watchdog function (magistrate and public accountant roles), drawing attention to failures at different stages of the PPP cycle, and the shepherding function (management accountant role), providing advice to the Government towards best practices on PPP governance and management. Considering the Government's reactions to the audit reports and the information available about CoA's recommendations implementation, there are doubts about the desired audit impact on the auditee's change of PPPs governance and management.

中文翻译：

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对公私合作伙伴关系的国家审计：对透明度、审计员角色的影响以及对被审计方反应的影响

最高审计机构 (SAI) 在政府对议会负责方面发挥着积极作用。与传统的公共采购相比，公私合作伙伴关系 (PPP) 是由私营部门实体提供基于基础设施的公共服务的不同途径。由于其性质，PPP 提出了与公共问责制透明度相关的具体问题，最高审计机关通过其提供的独立和有能力的审计，可以增强政府与议会之间问责关系的信息内容。我们对葡萄牙审计法院 (CoA) 出具的 16 份 PPP 审计报告进行了文件分析，以分析审计过程和产出。总体而言，我们的证据表明，CoA 通过审计报告，通过披露相关信息以对 PPP 进行更全面的公众监督和政治问责，从而减少信息不对称，并就更好的 PPP 治理和管理提出了若干建议。此外，我们的研究结果证实了 SAI 的两个功能，这两个功能都可以在同一份审计报告中找到：监督功能（治安官和公共会计师角色），提请注意 PPP 周期不同阶段的失败，以及引导功能（管理会计师角色），就 PPP 治理和管理的最佳实践向政府提供建议。考虑到政府对审计报告的反应以及关于 CoA 建议实施的可用信息，人们怀疑审计对被审计方的预期影响。