Audits

The Secretary-General ensures (also) an independent control over the activities of local authorities. Therefore, in the light of this function, in addition to that of coordination and oversight, he/she cannot advocate acts of management, except in the event of default. The Administrative Tribunal (TAR) of Calabria, by judgment n. 1653/2022, has declared illegitimate, for relative incompetence, the award of a contract with a decision taken by the Secretary-General rather than the responsible Public Officer.

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.

Due to the coronavirus emergency, public authorities are faced with the unprecedented challenge of ensuring that the entire national population complies with the measures to contain the pandemic. Against the very high number of checks to be carried out, and the limited resources available to the police, the contribution examines how technology can be a valid support in the activities of administrations.