A very common mistake and perseption outside the Auditing Community. Basically you are right about "Normal" audits, i.e., do all the columns add up, cross hatch, balance, etc. Performance Audits are a different animal and a very useful tool in both business and Government. Performance Audits can include but don't have to include the number balancing function. Their main purpose and I'll use the legislatively enacted CRC program as an example. The legislature, when they wrote the legal eagle language for the CRC, Instructed/commanded the WDFW to not only charge us sports crabbers an annual fee, but to "Establish" a sports caught crabbing system/methodology to count the sports caught crab that would stand "Smell Tests" of Validity of said system. Then WDFW was instructed to actually count the Sports Caught Crab. And finally, WDFW was charged with analyzing the count in relationship to Tribal caught crab (they have their own counting process) and Commercially caught crab (they also have a seperate counting system), for the expressed purpose of allocating the annual poundage of catchable dungeness crab. Prior systems/methods/mumbly pegs WDFW shellfish management program used to count sports caught crab were generally thought of being one step up from a comedy act with numbers and poundages pulled out of their collective arses to rationalize re-allocating sports crab poundage to the 225 or so active commercial crabbers. WDFW, and in particular, the shellfish management program fought tooth and toenail against the CRC which we sports crabbers pushed through. The shellfish management program wanted the status quo of Opinions coming out of their collective backsides for poundage allocation purposes, instead of "Auditable" numbers that the CRC was "Supposed" to provide. Good Count (No Joke) system of crab counting (kind of like what is done in British Columbia via a Contract) would REQUIRE Childers to get off his lazy no good for nothing (and No More Lying to the F&W Commission Childers about the advisor head count for and against your latest Opinionated proposal -- Got your foot nailed to the floor on that one) backside and actually do some allocation analysis.

The SAO Failed to even address how well the WDFW Shellfish Management Program did or did not accomplish what the legislature wanted/intended them to accomplish by eacting the CRC. That is what Larry B is pointing out.

That report is a joke, and a expensive (for us) joke. I can see Childers' technical review hand editorializing all through it. What Larry B pointed out above, the times the report singled out the sports non-compliance.

Sorry for the long winded shellfish program ineptnitude rant, but the Other Shoe is about to drop/fall, the Puget Sound Blackmouth Performance Audit. Stay tuned folks we still haven't been bent over in an Ungreased No Kiss Behind the Ear yet.

and we paid over one million dollars for that crap kid of sad