Brazil's Federal Court of Accounts
Insight and Foresight for Better Governance
Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), is seeking to go beyond its traditional oversight role and help improve policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. This report identifies ways TCU can achieve this by applying principles of good governance to areas such policy coherence, strategic and long-term budgeting, internal control and risk management, and monitoring and evaluation. It suggests concrete steps TCU can take to adapt its own strategies, approaches and audit programming to provide valuable insight and foresight to policy makers in the centre of government. In this way, it can help ensure that policies and programmes are forward looking and based on evidence.
Auditing for more robust internal control and risk management systems
This chapter explores select challenges the Brazilian government faces related to internal control and risk management, considering the role of numerous actors, and emphasising the contributions of Brazil’s supreme audit institution, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU). This chapter offers recommendations for TCU to nuance its work in this more traditional area in a way that promotes risk management, control and integrity that is more targeted to the changing policy landscape. Recommendations are framed around international principles in (i) government-wide systems of internal control and risk management (ii) entity-level ownership and capacity for implementation of internal control and risk management and (iii) capacity for use of tools for implementation. The time is now for actors in Brazil to prioritise a more robust internal control and risk management system that supports the government in achieving objectives, while reducing risks of fraud, corruption, waste and abuse.