The Operational Audit in Public Organizations - a Tool for Enhancing the Managerial Performance

Author:Lecturer Felicia Cornelia MACARIE, PhD

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Keywords:internal audit, operational audit, performance evaluation system (PES), effectiveness, efficiency

Abstract:
The management of public organizations is permanently assessed by the public services consumers and by different stockholders (politicians, mass media, economic organizations etc). Managers play a decisive role in the implementation and the functioning of a performance evaluation system but it is the auditors who support its application and offer the feedback. \r\nThe internal public audit procedures have been applied since recent time in our country and this strongly influences the managers’ and employees’ perception of the internal audit relevance. The internal audit is perceived as „another form or a new form of control” due to the fact that the audit departments were organized, especially in the local public administration and in the decentralized public institutions, with the support of the internal control structure and of those human resources that were in the past responsible of the control activities. This error of perception impairs the internal auditors work and the organization management. \r\nThe sources of the research are the annual reports of C.H.U.P.I.A (Central Harmonization Unit for Public Internal Audit) regarding the internal public audit activity between the 2004-2007 interval, available on the site of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, a questionnaire applied to a group of participants to an internal audit course organized by the Regional Centre of Lifelong Formation for the Local Public Administration Cluj-Napoca and interviews with managers and auditors from 18 local public organizations. \r\nThe obtained results partly confirm the hypotheses of the research.\r\n\r\n

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