It is believed that the ever present need to allocate proposed budgetary expenditures more effectively, and the advances taking place in some jurisdictions in program evaluation methodology, will inevitably combine to promote the establishment by the Province of systems to measure program effectiveness.(Office, 1983, p. 62, emphasis added) At this time, the Office considered program evaluation as a useful ally in trying to legitimize the emerging project of measuring government performance. However, in spite of the development in the 1980s of a professional and political network devoted to performance measurement, the Office (as well as other networks of accountants) had not yet fully constructed the types of problem that government or public servants would resolve, or avoid, by measuring and reporting on performance, or the
relative roles of auditors, program managers and program evaluators.15 Callon (1986) refers to this construction as a process of problematization, the ways in which proponents seek to make their claim indispensable by defining or underlining the problems with which an audience is (allegedly) confronted, and by presenting as necessary, solutions
advocated for these problems. From 1986 to 1991, the Office stopped discussing performance measurement in its reports. Nevertheless, Office auditors continued during this period to be interested in the notion of performance measurement.
As mentioned by one auditor: