Essential features of state audit as a tool for enhancing the effectiveness of state decision-making and implementation

Abstract

Problem. Enhancing the effectiveness of public administration is a persistent scientific challenge, as the very concept of effectiveness in relation to public authority cannot be reduced solely to resource savings, quantitative measurement of costs, or formal achievement of set indicators. In public administration, effectiveness implies a more complex set of characteristics, including the justification of state intervention in social processes, the quality of legal and organizational structuring of decisions, the rationality of resource utilization, the alignment of results with public needs, the sustainability of achieved effects, and the capacity of the public authority system for self-correction. In this regard, the study of the essential features of state audit allows for the justification of its independent place within the system of tools for enhancing the effectiveness of state decision-making and implementation. Methodology. The research is based on systemic, structural-functional, and comparative-legal approaches, as well as on the principles of public administration theory and the results of analyzing domestic and foreign works on performance evaluation and state audit research. Research Results. The research findings establish that state audit is characterized by an external position relative to the object of assessment, institutional independence, a multi-criteria nature of evaluation, and the ability to identify the causes of inefficiency, correlate results with objectives, and form corrective conclusions. The scientific article reflects that the combination of these features distinguishes state audit from monitoring, internal control, supervision, and performance measurement, and also allows it to be considered as an independent tool influencing the quality of state decisions and their subsequent implementation. Practical Application. The provisions of the article can be used in further research on the issues of state audit and public administration, in the analytical work of the control and audit bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation, in the preparation of scientific and methodological materials for assessing the quality of public administration, and in the formation of methodological approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of management decisions at the federal and regional levels of government.