L'audit interne et le contrôle interne au sein de l'administration fédérale belge : enjeux et évolution

Abstract

In a world where performance is key, internal control and internal audit become essential to the public sector. The Belgian federal government had already understood that twenty years ago, but it had not expected that it would take so long to materialize these concepts. Until now, six royal decrees have been published concerning internal control and internal audit in the federal public services and many changes have been made to these legal provisions. These legislative changes caused that it took more than fourteen years, since the first royal decree, to provide to all federal public services a common internal audit service. However, inconsistency between decrees is not the only explanation for this delay and several other reasons may have led to this situation. The significant presence of ex ante control, a narrow conception of internal audit and internal control and a lack of expertise in both areas may have hampered the growth of these notions. Hence, the analysis of these facts and causes raised questions: what is the current evolution of internal control and internal audit in the federal administration? Did this new federal internal audit service change the narrow vision of these concepts? In order to answer these questions, specific interviews with major actors of the federal administration were conducted. The collection of key information and a comparison of these opinions led to the following conclusions: the creation of this new federal internal audit service has positively influenced the development and the vision of internal control and internal audit in the federal administration. Nevertheless, this vision is still not shared by everyone and the involvement of each individual is still missing.