Portuguese Public Administration has recently undergone a vague of reforms, adopting programmes of administrative innovation and modernisation. In face of these changes, Portuguese public auditing, namely in the case of municipalities, is forced to act differently, adopting new methods of preparation, development and reporting, which assure functioning improvements and go along with the present needs, increasingly more exigent, namely going beyond budgetary issues. This seems to point to the adoption within Portuguese municipalities of auditing standards and procedures used in the private sector, eventually leading to a ‘New Public Auditing’.
This paper presents the main results of a research that had as general purpose to study the existence and implementation of internal auditing procedures within Portuguese municipalities, as a consequence of local management reforms. Using a questionnaire, we have searched for: knowing the features of the internal auditing service/department, if existent; gathering information on the practice of internal auditing standards and procedures, focusing on economic and financial auditing; and verifying which issues are object of internal auditing, namely those related to the accounting and internal control systems. We have also assessed the importance practices and objects of internal auditing are given, even if non existent. Given that the questionnaire was built on the basis of auditing standards used in the private sector, this research allows to assess the possibility for these to be applied and useful for Portuguese municipalities.