Public needs, public purse

A new research project attempts to provide governments with guidance to cost services, measure performance and enhance accountability

Government services are complex, and costing them appropriately is challenging. This is a reflection of the extraordinary diversity in services offered by Canada's three levels of government, the multiple stakeholders and interests in such services, the ever-changing environment in which services must be delivered, the difficulty in fairly allocating certain costs that do not have a causal link to services, and the difficulty in measuring their performance and accountability.

To meet this challenge, the CICA's Public Sector Accounting and …