Internal controls in the Public Administration: current problems and future challenges

Anna Peta ()
Additional contact information
Anna Peta: Banca d'Italia

No 312, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: At the beginning of the 1990s, in line with trends in other European countries, the need to increase the efficiency of administrative activity resulted in legislative initiatives to extend some of the management tools developed in the private sector to the Public Administration. Among these instruments, an important role was assigned to internal controls. Over twenty years since their introduction, the functioning of public internal controls still displays several critical aspects. Through a comparative assessment with other European models, this paper highlights the problems affecting the legal framework of Italian public internal controls, such as the lack of a clearly identified internal audit structure; the paper also points out that controls focus almost exclusively on formal rather than substantive aspects. Moreover, the results of past performance appraisal activities show that the principles of �accountability� and �transparency� are not widely applied within the Public Administration, thus undermining the effectiveness and usefulness of internal controls.

Keywords: planning; internal controls; accountability; efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H83 K23 M42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2016-0312/QEF_312_16.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_312_16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().