Local government administration systems and local government accounting information needs: is there a mismatch?

Abstract

After several years of reforms inspired by the New Public Management approach, public sector accounting and performance measurement systems continue to differ among countries. Based on previous literature and data collected through a questionnaire, we perform an exploratory study on the relations between local government administrative systems and local government accounting information needs in a sample of European countries characterized by a legalistic orientation. Our results reveal that there is a frequent mismatch between the needed accounting and performance measurement information for internal and external purposes assessed on the basis of the administrative system in place and the accounting information and performance measurement information required by the law for decision-making and accountability. Moreover, as the results reveal, legislation in European local governments only sporadically stipulates the information suitable to satisfy the information needs created by the different levels of financial and organizational autonomy of local government administration systems to be available.

Points for practitioners

In this article, we compare the accounting information and performance measurement information required by the law for decision-making and accountability to the information that we would expect to be available for internal and external purposes assessed on the basis of the administrative systems in local governments in 11 (eleven) European countries. Apart from the mismatches identified, our results provide evidence that the accounting reforms towards accruals have been adopted without informing the systems related to administration, accountability, everyday decisions and assessment from oversight authorities. Unless this situation changes, the limited use of accruals should come as no surprise.