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New Reporting Tools at the Central Government Level: Experiences in Light of a Budgeting and Accounting Reform in Austria

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New Trends in Public Sector Reporting

Part of the book series: Public Sector Financial Management ((PUSEFIMA))

Abstract

Set in the context of an extensive budgeting and accounting reform, this chapter offers insights into the new reporting tools’ relative advantage and usefulness from the perspective of public managers (directors general and heads of department in ministries and central government agencies) as well as from the perspective of politicians (federal legislators, i.e. members of parliament). The findings suggest that practices and procedures that create a time lag between the disclosure of financial statements and outcome reports prevent legislators as the main addressees of such reports from gaining an integrated view of the government’s financial and non-financial performance. The chapter also highlights the role of intermediaries and approaches of popular reporting (also known as citizen-centric reporting) in ‘translating’ rich financial and non-financial information.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a more detailed discussion of public managers and politicians in budgeting at the central level, see chapters 8 and 9 in Shah (2007), and for a specific overview in Austria, see Downes et al. (2018, p. 21 ff).

  2. 2.

    The respective full reports are available via: https://www.bmf.gv.at/budget/haushaltsrechtsreform/externe-evaluierung-bundeshaushaltsrecht.html; last accessed: 10 May 2019.

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Saliterer, I., Korac, S. (2020). New Reporting Tools at the Central Government Level: Experiences in Light of a Budgeting and Accounting Reform in Austria. In: Manes-Rossi, F., Levy Orelli, R. (eds) New Trends in Public Sector Reporting. Public Sector Financial Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40056-9_5

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