The Advent of the Age of Accounting Standards for Public Administrations

In the past few years, the pressure towards the change of public administrations has manifested itself in an ever more intense way in the search for rationalising the relationship between the service activity to collectivity and the production cost of such activity, so to make this relationship socially as well as economically sustainable. Claiming for both a modernisation of public administrations and a more efficient usage of their resources, implies that there are in place accounting systems and economic-financial data that are consistent with these claimed changes and that are able to accompany and guide them. In this respect, then, the choice and issuance of accounting standards, that are at the basis of these new and more adequate information systems of the public sector bodies, become a priority in the wider design of change of these organisations. The paper introduces to the analysis of the multiple and complex issues involved with the ongoing passage of public administrations to private sector-like accounting standards.