Auditoria operacional como mecanismo de avaliação de políticas públicas em pequenos e médios municípios: a proposta de um manual

Abstract

The objective of this study is to assess how Operational Audit, as an independent examination of the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration actions, can be used as a tool for evaluating and improving municipal public policies, given that this mechanism is widely used at the federal and state levels. Initially, a theoretical discussion and contextualization of public policies were presented, with emphasis on one of its phases, evaluation, also addressing the state function of internal control and the operational audit mechanism. Furthermore, this study aims to develop an Operational Audit methodology for the municipality studied, through the creation of an Operational Audit Manual. The Manual was developed based on a bibliographic review and documentary analysis of eleven normative instruments at the federal, state and municipal levels, complemented by thirteen semi-structured interviews with managers, coordinators, legal advisors and internal control auditors from the three municipal secretariats studied and the internal control unit of the municipality, whose contents were submitted to categorical content analysis based on Bardin (2016). The results revealed the absence of autonomous mechanisms for evaluating results in the municipality, limited institutional capacity, cultural resistance to change, low quality of available municipal data, and spontaneous recognition by the interviewees themselves of the need for a practical operational audit instrument, findings that directly guided the decisions made in constructing the Manual. As a result, a structured methodological instrument was developed, encompassing the planning, execution, reporting and monitoring phases of Operational Audit, applicable to the municipal context and designed for Controllers with limited staff and resources. The research also considered the characteristic constraints of municipal management identified by Grin, Demarco and Abrucio (2021), namely political-administrative discontinuity arising from electoral cycles, turnover of civil servants and commissioned positions, and dependence on external information technology providers, incorporated into the Manual as specific institutional risk factors. It is concluded that the Manual contributes to addressing the shortage of standardized operational audit methodologies at the municipal level, providing concrete technical guidance for strengthening internal control and local governance.