A nova contabilidade pública brasileira como instrumento de controle social para a "governança" do estado: um estudo sobre a compreensão da evidenciação das demonstrações contábeis públicas pelos líderes comunitários da cidade de Curitiba no ano de 2013

Abstract

Improvements on transparency and substantiation of Public Administration are in the core of changes brought in by New Accounting to the Public Sector, given that one of its goals is to accomplish social control. In this context, it is undisputed that citizens must understand the message enclosed in government financial statements. This paper is aimed at discussing how to make average citizens have a better understanding of accounting information enclosed in government financial statements, which are essential to account-giving by public agents. First step was set the objective as uncovering how much local volunteer leaders in the city of Curitiba, Brazil, knew about and were interested in account-giving by public agents, from the information extracted from government financial statements. The research made use of the questionnaire as a tool for data collection in the field. The methodology of data analysis applied to the questionnaire was used univariate and bivariate analyzes of, the latter performed with the aid of the chi-square test. Based on field research, theoretical references, literature review and documentary research, it was discovered that most of the respondents don’t seek out information about public expenditure, even though the vast majority is highly or averagely interested in the contents of account-giving. It is stated that what makes seeking out information difficult is precisely the lack of knowledge in public accounting terminology. As a result, it is perceptible that restrictions on financial communication may be reduced with previous analysis and elucidation and with the use of uncomplicated language.