EPSAS and the Unification of Public Sector Accounting Across Europe

In March 2013, the EC started a project aimed at harmonizing accrual-based public sector accounting systems through a set of harmonized accrual-based public sector accounting standards. The entire project is based on the assumption that the “superiority of the accruals principle, whether for macro or micro fiscal monitoring, is indisputable” (EC, 2013, p. 6). The paper offers critical perspective on the possible adoption of the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) inspired by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS). More specifically, the paper deals with the theoretical concepts of harmonization, standardization, and unification, as defined by the international accounting literature, with a view to identify the possible consequences of the public accounting unification process that is going to be promoted by the EU. In the European Union perspective, accounting unification is a desirable outcome, a pre-condition for attaining, measuring, controlling, and demonstrating budgetary equilibrium, according to a strictly rational logic consistent with a functionalist perspective of public sector accounting. Such an approach, it is argued in the paper, leads to a misunderstanding of public sector accounting, which is considered as a neutral technology whereas it is actually a tool of commensuration with a strong influence on the economic and political life of social communities, since it generates interpretative categories and contributes to change social relationships and values prioritization

La comptabilité publique, instrument et enjeu des rapports entre pouvoir central et collectivités locales : le cas du processus d’harmonisation en Italie

Cet article analyse le processus d’harmonisation comptable des collectivités locales en Italie et l’influence de la centralisation de l’administration publique sur ce processus. Dans un premier temps soumis à un mouvement d’autonomie et décentralisation, ce processus a assisté à un retour du contrôle central du fait des politiques issues de la crise financière et des procédures européennes.This articles analyses accounting harmonisation process for local governments in Italy with a view to central government influence on it. In an earlier phase, this process was concerned with a tendency toward autonomy and decentralization, but it was reserved to comply with policies driven by the global financial crisis and European procedures

Public Management Reform in the U.S. and Italy: Accounting, Measurement and Financial

This article focuses primarily on efforts to improve management control systems and processes, including budgeting, accounting and reporting, within the context of a responsibility framework in the United States and Italy. In public management theory, management control is assumed to be a process for motivating and inspiring people to perform more effectively in the context of working in complex organizations (Jones and Thompson, 1999: 130). From this perspective, management control attempts to motivate public managers to serve the policies and purposes of the organizations to which they belong, and to meet the demands and preferences of the citizens and customers they serve. Additionally, management control is a means for correcting performance problems and including inefficient use of resources. Among the initiatives taken to implement management control systems and to control costs is the design of new or reconfigured budgeting, accounting and reporting systems. One approach to redesign is responsibility budgeting and accounting, now widely practiced internationally

Les transformations de l'action publique au prisme des réformes comptables et financières

Les transformations récentes de l’action publique redéfinissent l’espace public et ses modes d’action collective. Elles modifient les frontières et relations héritées entre public et privé, central et local, européen et national. Dans ce contexte, la normalisation comptable est le pendant de la coordination financière entre ces différents niveaux de l’administration publique. Elle y joue un rôle majeur en tant que mode et instrument de représentation, coordination et organisation de cet espace public et de cette action collective. Ce numéro spécial analyse ces transformations de l’action publique au prisme des réformes comptables et financières qui les véhiculent et les influencent. Chercheurs et institutionnels spécialistes de ces questions dressent les enjeux de ces réformes pour la coordination et l’évaluation des politiques publiques, ainsi que pour le fonctionnement et l’existence même des administrations publiques dans leurs spécificités.Recent transformations of public action reshape public domain and its collective action. These transformations reframe established frontiers and relationships between private and public, central and local, European and national dimensions. In this context, accounting harmonization relates to financial coordination between these different layers of public administration. Accounting harmonization plays a major role as mode and device of representation, coordination and organization for this public domain and its collective action. This special issue addresses these transformations of public action through the lens of financial and accounting reforms which transmit and reshape them. Academic and institutional students of these issues analyze these reforms and their implications for public policies evaluation, as well as for the working and very existence of public administration in its specificity

Les transformations de l'action publique au prisme des réformes comptables et financières

Les transformations récentes de l’action publique redéfinissent l’espace public et ses modes d’action collective. Elles modifient les frontières et relations héritées entre public et privé, central et local, européen et national. Dans ce contexte, la normalisation comptable est le pendant de la coordination financière entre ces différents niveaux de l’administration 
publique. Elle y joue un rôle majeur en tant que mode et instrument de représentation, coordination et organisation de cet espace public et de cette action collective. Ce numéro 
spécial analyse ces transformations de l’action publique au prisme des réformes comptables et financières qui les véhiculent et les influencent. Chercheurs et institutionnels spécialistes de ces questions dressent les enjeux de ces réformes pour la coordination et l’évaluation des politiques publiques, ainsi que pour le fonctionnement et l’existence même des administrations publiques dans leurs spécificités.Recent transformations of public action reshape public domain and its collective action. These transformations reframe established frontiers and relationships between private and public, central and local, European and national dimensions. In this context, accounting harmonization relates to financial coordination between these different layers of public administration. Accounting harmonization plays a major role as mode and device of representation, coordination and organization for this public domain and its collective action. This special issue addresses these transformations of public action through the lens of financial and accounting reforms which transmit and reshape them. Academic and institutional students of these issues analyze these reforms and their implications for public policies evaluation, as well as for the working and very existence of public administration in its specificity

Low dose rate brachytherapy (LDR-BT) as monotherapy for early stage prostate cancer in Italy: practice and outcome analysis in a series of 2237 patients from 11 institutions

OBJECTIVE: Low-dose-rate brachytherapy (LDR-BT) in localized prostate cancer is available since 15 years in Italy. We realized the first national multicentre and multidisciplinary data collection to evaluate LDR-BT practice, given as monotherapy, and outcome in terms of biochemical failure. METHODS: Between May 1998 and December 2011, 2237 patients with early-stage prostate cancer from 11 Italian community and academic hospitals were treated with iodine-125 ((125)I) or palladium-103 LDR-BT as monotherapy and followed up for at least 2 years. (125)I seeds were implanted in 97.7% of the patients: the mean dose received by 90% of target volume was 145 Gy; the mean target volume receiving 100% of prescribed dose (V100) was 91.1%. Biochemical failure-free survival (BFFS), disease-specific survival (DSS) and overall survival (OS) were estimated using Kaplan-Meier method. Log-rank test and multivariable Cox regression were used to evaluate the relationship of covariates with outcomes. RESULTS: Median follow-up time was 65 months. 5- and 7-year DSS, OS and BFFS were 99 and 98%, 94 and 89%, and 92 and 88%, respectively. At multivariate analysis, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network score (p < 0.0001) and V100 (p = 0.09) were correlated with BFFS, with V100 effect significantly different between patients at low risk and those at intermediate/high risk (p = 0.04). Short follow-up and lack of toxicity data represent the main limitations for a global evaluation of LDR-BT. CONCLUSION: This first multicentre Italian report confirms LDR-BT as an excellent curative modality for low-/intermediate-risk prostate cancer. ADVANCES IN KNOWLEDGE: Multidisciplinary teams may help to select adequately patients to be treated with brachytherapy, with a direct impact on the implant quality and, possibly, on outcome

Book-keeping in the 16th-century building yard of the Castello of Crotone: an accountancy and architectural analysis

This article aims to promote interdisciplinary research between the history of accounting and that of architecture, and recognizes the different point of view that ancient accounting documentation offers to two scientific branches of study that only appear to be distant. The article analyses the surviving registries prepared during the renovation of the fortification of Crotone in Calabria (Italy) during the sixteenth century and, accordingly, it allows the reconstruction of a sufficiently broad outline of the architectural events that occur in a large building yard, connecting this intervention to an architectural history frame of reference that surpasses the limits of regional boundaries. At the same time, the specificity of the examined documentation has allowed us to identify the roles and the subjects assigned to keep accounts, within the complex system with which the disorderly Spanish administration managed its extremely vast dominion

La contabilità di cantiere del Castello di Crotone nel XVI secolo: un’analisi ragionieristica ed architettonica

Il presente articolo descrive la contabilità dei lavori per il rinnovamento del Castello e la ricostruzione della fortificazione di Crotone nel XVI° secolo, seguendo gli approcci di indagine propri delle discipline della Storia della Ragioneria e della Storia dell’Architettura. Il contributo è introdotto da una breve contestualizzazione storica, necessaria alla comprensione dei principali avvenimenti politici dell’epoca ed all’evidenziazione delle ragioni per le quali il complesso fortificato crotonese abbia subito una rilevante trasformazione tra il XV° ed il XVI° secolo. Proprio la rilevanza strategica della Fortezza ha comportato la conservazione delle documentazioni contabili presso l’Archivio di Stato di Napoli; lo studio delle fonti in esso conservate ha abbracciato un periodo storico di riferimento di circa quindici anni, dal 1541 al 1555, ed ha comportato l’esame non solo dei libri contabili relativi alla costruzione, ma anche delle risultanze dell’Ispezione al cantiere condotta dal Duca di Calabria nel corso del XV° Secolo, nonché delle disposizioni rinvenibili nei Registri Curiae della Regia Camera della Sommaria, il supremo organo di controllo amministrativo e finanziario del regno. L’articolo prosegue poi con l’esame dei libri contabili e delle connesse responsabilità amministrative, distinguendo il Giornale dello Scrivano di ratione dai Conti del Tesoriere e del Pagatore, ed enfatizzando per ciascuno il ruolo all’interno del sistema di gestione e controllo del cantiere della Fortezza. Infine le medesime fonti consentono la formulazione di considerazioni inerenti al modo di operare e di fare architettura in un’area periferica del Viceregno napoletano e di seguire le modifiche strutturali che la Fortezza ha subito nel corso dei secoli