1.3. Assessment methodology

This section describes the methodological choices made for the assessment. Four main topics are covered:

1. Coverage of the assessment: This refers to the tier of government covered, which is typically a central government or one subnational government. In order to understand the scope of the assessment, the report specifies which institutional units and operations are covered and which are not. Setting the boundaries of the government being assessed concerns both the boundaries with other tiers of government and the boundaries with other parts of the general government sector, for example, institutional units outside central government such as public corporations. Any deviations from the coverage of central government or a subnational government specified in the coverage for each indicator must be explained and justified. In particular, the coverage of social security funds, sovereign wealth funds, and structured financing instruments such as PPPs shall be specified. Definition of the assessment coverage shall be consistent with the description of institutional units and fiscal operations, as provided in subsections 2.3 and 2.4 of the report.
2. When performance is assessed: Description of the timeline for the assessment with the data cut-off date for measurement is to be clearly defined. The cut-off date is the last date for which data included in the assessment was considered. This is crucial for identifying the “last completed fiscal year” referred to in many dimensions and the critical date for consideration of circumstances applying “at the time of the assessment”, which is relevant to other dimensions.

3. Sources of information: The assessment team will need to collect information from officials from central finance agencies as well as from a variety of budgetary units and other institutional units. In order to obtain a fair representation of institutions within the resource constraints on the assessment team, the units from which information is to be collected need to be selected on an indicator by indicator basis. The basis for selecting government units from which information is collected is often specified in the guidance for individual indicators. The government units selected for an indicator should be described in the report within the narrative for each indicator, together with the method used for selecting a sample, where relevant.

   Other sources of information used for the assessment are described in this section of the report. This would include documents obtained, interviews with representatives of other levels of government, public corporations, private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and external finance institutions and development partners. A full list shall be provided in Annex 3 of the report.

4. Other methodological issues for the preparation of the report, such as any departure from use of the entire indicator set, and whether the assessment is a stand-alone assessment or is combined with any other analytical work. The treatment of indicators that are not applicable or not used is discussed in part 1, section 2.1 of this PEFA Framework document.