Internal Controls and Auditing in Italian Local Governments

During the ‘90s Italian Local Governments (LGs) have undergone important reforms, involving deep changes in their control systems. These reforms have been triggered by the international reform movement, labelled as New Public Management (NPM), which has promoted the shift to a management system oriented towards efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of internal controls in Italian LGs and to verify whether definitions and concepts concerning controls are uniformly used by the Italian law and the prevailing international literature. In doing so, it is possible to define the framework wherein the LG internal controls have been developed and to derive benchmarks of control quality for the Italian rules assessment. The results of the analysis provide clues which should allow the formulation of some recommendations about the policies to adopt for the effective implementation of internal controls.