PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

An effective parliament (I): The national level I 131
Further online reading about oversight through
the committee system :
Gay, O and Winetrobe, B (2003). Parliamentary audit: the audit committee in
comparative context. A report to the audit committee of the Scottish parliament.
(document en anglais)
Krafchik, W. and Wehner, J. (2004). Legislatures and budget oversight: best
practices.
National Democratic Institute (1996). Committees in legislatures: a division of
labor.
Oversight by and over non-governmental public agencies
In respect of parliamentary oversight, two broadly different types of nongovernmental
agency should be distinguished. First are those agencies which
are themselves designed to contribute to the oversight of government, such as
the Ombudsman, Human Rights Commission, Anti-corruption Commission,
Auditor General’s Office, and so on. The last two will be treated more specifically
under the theme of financial control later in this chapter. Here only the
general point should be repeated that was made in Chapter 4, that oversight is
more likely to be effective if the membership of such bodies is approved by
parliament and they are accountable to it rather than to the government. By
virtue of their specialist expertise, and their links with civil society organisations,
such agencies are invaluable in complementing the oversight work of
parliamentary committees. The submission from the Norwegian Parliament,
for example, mentions four independent agencies which it regards as ‘crucial
in the scrutiny functions of the Storting’: The Office of the Auditor General,
the Parliamentary Ombudsman for Public Administration, the Committee for
Monitoring of Intelligence, Surveillance and Security, and the Ombudsman
for the Armed Forces. With the exception of the last of these, whose reports
are reviewed by the Defence Committee, their reports are reviewed by the
Standing Committee on Scrutiny. Another agency contributing to parliamentary
oversight in many countries is an Office for National Statistics. Given the
opportunities for ‘massaging’ statistics to show government policies in a