I sure hope so.
Actually, after we do an audit, the departments produce an action plan to address the recommendations. The public accounts committee is very diligent in ensuring that the action plans are serious and well designed. I've seen the committee actually turn back some action plans that they didn't think were sufficiently specific. Then, to see if departments have actually done what they said they would do, we go back and do a follow-up audit based on those action plans.
The results of our follow-up audits indicate that in the majority of cases, government does make good progress. At the end of the day government officials really do want to manage their programs well; in fact, in many cases we see that as we are doing the audit, they will begin taking action as soon as we raise issues with them. We really do believe that yes, we contribute to better management of programs and to stronger institutions.