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

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.