Governança pública : análise das práticas de controle interno adotadas pela Polícia Federal na Superintendência Regional do Estado do Espírito Santo

Abstract

Proper handling of public funds has been a constant concern in the public sector, not only due to corruption carried out by government employees, but also because of bad administration, low efficiency and efficacy, and poor budgeting when allocating resources and executing public policies. In the quest for better performance standards in public sector governance, the Brazilian institution ‘Tribunal de Contas da União’ (Federal Court of Accounts) also known by the acronym TCU, has proposed a series of internal checks to be used as an internal control model; the adopted guidelines are very similar to the ones proposed by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), which are internal control parameters observed in the private sector. From a public governance perspective, this research sought to analyze internal control practices used by the Federal Police Superintendency in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, and its compliance with internal control procedures outlined as essential by COSO I. Based on this premise, this study is an exploratory research of qualitative nature that used the methodological approach to examine the case study. In addition to documentary and legal research, data gathering also consisted of semi-structured interviews. Results indicated that the analyzed documents and information collected are consistently close to the conceptual basis of COSO I in the dimensions 'control environment', 'control procedures' and 'monitoring.' Another takeaway was that the Federal Police places high value on maintaining integrity and ethical values, which is in line with the proposed model standards. However, the findings also uncovered the need for improvements, especially in the dimensions ‘risk assessment’ and ‘information and communication,’ which failed to meet the internal control structure recommendations outlined by COSO I. The identified discrepancies reinforce the need for applicability analysis geared towards reference models in an organizational context, taking each organization’s particularities and specificities into account.