I'm the first person to admit that being informed that your agency will have an audit is not always welcome news. The auditor's mission is to find things that need fixing, so their mindset is to find what is broken or not performing well. In the military it was the Inspector General (IG) who would do inspections and those usually included an "In Briefing" where they would say, "We are here to help you," and then everyone would chuckle about that statement being made.
However, the reality is that we do need watchdogs looking at what government is doing. The two groups that I see doing this as their mission are auditors and on the outside, the media. The media is facing the same types of cuts that are facing auditors here in Washington state. The ability to do detailed investigative stories has severely diminished as news departments in newspapers, which is where most of this work was done, have been decimated by budget cuts.
The most recent international story of the Panama Papers is but one example of the types of resources necessary to do a deep dive into the treasure trove of information that was given to them.
While government is good and necessary, it is also true that there can be efficiencies that can be achieved and then there is also the issue of misplaced priorities and yes, even graft — which appears is found everywhere, inside and outside of government.
An electronic monitoring system does not replace a large watchdog with a very loud bark!
