Maria Elisa Borrelli

Deputy Secretary General of the Municipality of Milan

D.L. n. 174/2012 details the internal control system in local authorities envisaged by D.Lgs. n. 286/1999, providing for a preventive and a subsequent phase of administrative regularity control. According to art. 147-bis T.U.E.L., subsequent control is an internal arbitral control, implemented during the following phase of the formation of the act, under the direction of the municipal secretary. It must be ensured according to general principles of corporate audit and methods defined within the organization's autonomy. Acts subject to control include: expenditure commitment determinations, entry verification documents, expenditure settlement documents, contracts and other administrative documents. Subsequent check concerns legitimacy and cost-effectiveness of administrative action. Nevertheless, accounting principles do not properly integrate the purpose of the subsequent check for administrative regularity, as they are concentrated only in regularity check of the determinations, contracts and deeds subject to control and not also accounting check. Art. 147-bis.3 affirms that the municipal secretary must send control results to: units evaluating employees’ results, for example useful documents for the evaluation, the Auditors, the City Council and the various heads of services, along with directives to comply with in case of irregularity. Subsequent check processes may take advantage of digital transformation since it is realized through a double paper-digital track. Thus, we could hypothesize the development of an ad hoc IT platform. As an outcome, there could be several benefits such as the dematerialisation and progressive digitization of the procedure. Besides, all the information of the authority would be better integrated, while optimizing the data acquired, avoiding duplications in document requests and allowing for a green transition.

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