The Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) program was initiated in 2001 by seven international development partners: The European Commission, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the governments of France, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. PEFA began as a means to harmonize assessment of PFM across the partner organizations. It subsequently established a standard methodology for PFM diagnostic assessments, the PEFA framework. Since 2001 PEFA has become the acknowledged standard for PFM assessments. In 2019, the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic became a new partner of the program. The PEFA program provides a framework for assessing and reporting on the strengths and weaknesses of public financial management (PFM) using quantitative indicators to measure performance. PEFA is designed to provide a snapshot of PFM performance at specific points in time using a methodology that can be replicated in successive assessments, giving a summary of changes over time. PEFA is a methodology for assessing public financial management performance. It identifies 94 characteristics (dimensions) across 31 key components of public financial management (indicators) in 7 broad areas of activity (pillars).