Performance Audit Role In The Quality Of Public Services And Social Welfare: Tirana Municipality Case Study

Good governance commences at the local level. This happens, because the same principles of good governance are applied in both local and central levels of governance. Local government authorities, elected independently from the community of a certain territorial communion, are entities where direct democracy and citizen representation is exercised, public services are provided and socio-economic development takes place. The administrative-territorial reform, as a forerunner of a series of local government reforms, created a new and favourable framework in the context of local government authorities’ empowerment and public services efficiency. It also reshaped the challenges of advancing local democracy and engaging citizens in public affairs. The local governance performance and the way it interacts with citizens influence the behaviour of the latter, as well as the intercommunity relations, cohesion and trust within and between communities relations; this legitimizes local government efforts and promotes sustainable development. Institutional performance in public sector, also called governmental performance, is often measured by indicators (elated to resources and outcomes, but there is an increasing consensus of the fact that monetary resources are not enough. Obviously, the results of local governance are difficult to measure objectively. This study aims to provide an overview of local governance in Albania, focusing on public opinion and satisfaction with Tirana Municipality activity. Thus, what is the public perception towards Tirana Municipality activity and what would the citizens of Tirana like to change or improve on local government service delivery? This is followed by the well-known assumption that citizens rely on personal experiences when they create their own views, which are closely related to their knowledge and understanding of local government performance as a starting point for good governance, and in some cases they can make local authorities liable for issues that are not under their direct control. For this reason, the key purpose of this research is to evaluate main stakeholders’ perception such as: the employees and high level officials of Tirana Municipality, as service providers, and citizens or entrepreneurs of Tirana Municipality, as beneficiaries of these services. In this context, it is also interesting to find a correlation between their perceptions on performance of public services delivered, in order to increase performance and social welfare. Although the results of the study do not constitute scientific measurements, they highlight the most prominent problems of Tirana Municipality as well as the perception that citizens or entrepreneurs of Tirana Municipality have for their opportunities, role and influence on important issues such as transparency, accountability, rule of law and citizen participation. What we seek to achieve at the end of all the analysis is the assessment of performance audit role in the Albanian public sector, a measurement that will be realized mainly through the perception of citizens or entrepreneurs, as well as the perception of employees and head officials of Tirana Municipality, studying a representative sample for each category. The basic perquisite is that the positive impact of performance audit or the growth of its role in helping good governance shall increase the perception of improving the quality of local governance as well as the public satisfaction; these indicators of satisfaction can be therefore used as indicators of good governance.