An attempt to measure auditing usefulness in the governance of public organizations

Abstract

Auditing is an essential practice to ensure the proper control of operations, activities and functions within public organizations, and in result, contribute to the achievement of short, medium and long-term objectives. However, a few years ago, auditing was still a marginal practice in the Moroccan public sector, a practice that has gradually expanded following the law number 62-99 forming the financial jurisdictions code, the new constitution of 2011 and other recent managerial reforms. This article seeks to assess the usefulness of auditing in the governance of public organizations through a qualitative approach based on the Court of Accounts reports, as the main audit and control institution in the public sector. To do this, we chose to carry out a documentary study of the audit reports published following thematic audit missions done by the Court of Accounts in four ministerial departments. The results showed the importance of this audit in the transparency and governance of the public administrations studied, through the improvement of the internal control system, risks detection and the implementation of the necessary corrective actions. However, we were also able to observe that the audit alone does not resolve all the shortcomings excellently identified, which could be a logical reason to introduce a new practice in the public sector, which is more appropriate in terms of analyzing and resolving problems, notably the global diagnosis.

Keywords: Audit, public sector, management of public organizations, governance, performance.

JEL Classification: M42

Paper type : Empirical research