Mediação implícita da informação e as demonstrações contábeis do setor público

Abstract

The centrality of this thesis is the implicit mediation of information and its relationship with the financial statements applied to the Brazilian Public Sector. With major advances in methods, concepts, standards and technologies, notably from the second half of the 20th century, discussions about the importance, treatment and concepts of “information” reached a high degree of breadth and depth. For this reason, it was assessed the extent to which financial statements are an implicit mediation device for information. The concepts of information mediation were discussed, a device from the Foucauldian perspective, the evolution and structuring standards applied to the accounting statements of the Public Sector in Brazil and the role of the courts of accounts based on a data collection through documentary research and of content analysis in the inspection/audit reports of the Comptroller General of the Union and the Court of Auditors of the Municipalities of the State of Bahia based on the bibliographic method and multiple case studies. A structured form was applied to a sample of 100 cases. It was concluded that the Public Sector's financial statements, characterized as useful information, in the conceptions of Information Science and Accounting Science, can be identified as a device in the Foulcauldian perspective. These statements are documents that contribute to the implicit mediation process. With thus, it is concluded that the financial statements applied to the public sector must undergo adjustments to achieve greater effectiveness in the implicit mediation of information between public managers, citizens and supervisory bodies. The results obtained through the methodology adopted demonstrated that the actions of supervisory and control bodies partially capture the potential for implicit mediation of the Public Sector's financial statements.