Abstract
In the City of Burgdorf (Switzerland), the audit committee, which is composed of members of parliament, is the only committee that permanently supervises the city government and administration on behalf of the city parliament. In the course of the last ten years, the audit committee has pragmatically developed an administration control process which is suitable for militia and scrutinizes the administrative management annually. Due to the high degree of standardization, this is a reliable means of supervision. As a result of three feedback loops, this process enables the dialogue between government and parliament, thus a mutual learning process regarding the improvement of quality of administrative actions. The city’s administration control process – along with the audit of the federal councils – is following the international trend of performance audits in the public sector, that experienced an upturn during the management reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.