An Approach to the History of Public Auditing

Can you know the public audit without knowing its history? The question seems naive, and even, it is paradoxical insofar as it arises motivated by the magazine that has as its object: The Public Audit. And that she affirms in her Presentation "This is an initiative of the Spanish courts of autonomous accounts that in 1995, decided to promote the first specialized publication on this matter" (www.auditoriapublica.com). Now that the Public Audit magazine is close to number 50, it is appropriate to try a retrospective, an analysis of past events, and make this past a problem of the present to project it into the future.

For this reason, building the history of the public audit journal should lead us to strengthen the explanatory capacity of its present, to respond to the expectations and problems of its "subject" study. However, the present study is a beginning, because in our current horizon, the need for history in the field of auditing has not yet emerged as an aspiration in teaching or in control entities, which is why we face not only to factual constraints, but also to "theoretical" constraints (in a loose sense) represented by ideas, concepts, or concepts that have been imposed as "truth" in the audit or audit, to the extent that they have blindfolded and our mind suppressing deficiencies and inconsistencies, and from this point of view,Public auditors have become prisoners of our time, and for this reason it is an essential condition to go towards the construction of history, reexamining all the acquired notions, to which we owe ourselves, to which we respond, for which we act or against that we oppose ourselves, through a permanent exercise of discussion and reflection that responds to current challenges.

The emergence of the notion of public audit is late, for example, the issuance of its Auditing Standards were developed by the United States Comptroller General (GAO) in 1972, and by the International Organization of Superior Audit Institutions (INTOSAI, organization created within the framework of the UN that brings together the Higher Entities for the Inspection of public finances) in 1992, also this year the Autonomous External Control Bodies (OCEX) publish the Public Sector Auditing Standards and the General Intervention of the State Administration (IGAE) did the same in 1998, however, the regulatory approval does not prevent the following problem from becoming evident almost immediately:

• "In the absence of sufficient regulatory development of the principle of coordination in the audit activity (…) the establishment of technical operating systems is proposed that enhance homogeneity in the exercise of the audit activity." "In the absence of technical standards for Generally accepted public audit, the practice of audits in the public sector differs depending on who performs it (…) The practice of audits in the public sector requires that, regardless of the entity that executes it, they be carried out with greater homogenization for what the issuance of some Public Auditing Technical Standards that cover all the technical aspects of the work is necessary. "" The European Commission began, on June 22,the consultation period to determine whether to proceed with the adoption of international auditing standards. The consultation, aimed at all professionals affected by the measure, understands that these international standards would contribute to promoting the credibility and quality of audits and to increasing the acceptance of this type of report in the European Union ”.

Consequently so:

• “The Government will modify the auditing law to reinforce its independence and supervision. Specifically, the report deals with the preliminary draft that will modify Law 19/1988 on Accounts Auditing. The reform of the law will oblige audits of accounts to be carried out in accordance with the international standards adopted by the European Union ”.

Apparently, Spain, like other countries that have adopted a similar strategy, aims to establish a broader vision of auditing that leads to the fulfillment of its purposes by providing an independent, objective and informed opinion, through a homogeneous practice of public or government audit. A trend accepted and promoted in: Meetings, Congresses, Forums, and various spaces that have had as their purpose, the "debate" of the problem of inspection. As in the 2005 International Forum on Superior Audit in Mexico and the World, which pointed out that a fundamental problem of public audit was the lack of “Adherence to international auditing standards. Given that, in general, the audits carried out by the superior audit institutions,they are technically more robust and reliable, if they punctually apply professional auditing standards, such as those issued by INTOSAI or by internationally renowned audit bodies. An acute problem with audits in developing countries is that they do not usually have uniform financial-accounting and economic methodologies, a serious problem that prevents criteria from unifying standards in particular between public federal auditors and auditors. local".This is a serious problem that prevents criteria from unifying standards in particular between public federal auditors and local auditors ”.This is a serious problem that prevents criteria from unifying standards in particular between public federal auditors and local auditors ”.

Originating a directionality in the thinking of public auditors, the effect of which has been largely the renunciation of their responsibility to give an undisturbed and rigorous analysis of INTOSAI's public auditing standards or international standards of this practice; On the contrary, they have offered us the usual repetition and praise, as in:

• “Achieving the above objectives requires the existence, in terminology of INTOSAI's European Implementation Guidelines for Auditing Standards, of some common elements of the quality assurance function.” “While these standards lack strength binding on SAIs, however, they express their consensus opinion regarding best practice (…) In the opinion expressed by the INTOSAI Steering Committee, these standards constitute a living document insofar as they reflect current trends and issues in in relation to the methods and practices of oversight. ”“ The United States was the pioneering country in the evaluation of public policies. Currently, it has highly advanced evaluation systems, an unquestionable institutionalization (GAO) and incomparable methodological perfection ”."The examination must be completed by observing the Government Auditing Standards (Public Auditing), the Generally Accepted Auditing Standards, and the International Auditing Standards."

But the fact that almost no thinker has questioned INTOSAI's auditing standards stems not from an individual problem, but from professional training (or rather deformation). Therefore, the present work proposes the following hypothesis: The lack of debate in the field of public auditing is proportional to the absence of the theory or theories, and is what explains its ahistoricity and why it is not constituted as a rigorous activity in social knowledge.

The problem is found from its origin, in a conception that has posed the challenges of "This publication should be the one that (…) theoretically strengthens us" and "through the magazine Public Audit we intend (…) to promote debate and participation " But can you strengthen a matter that does not exist?

The term subject is used to speak of a subject or discipline in teaching. And in the auditor's university training, a subject called: Public Audit is lacking. Derived that the curricular programs in the universities or higher education centers do not have as objective the teaching of public auditing. For this reason, the supposed specialization is not such, because "Specialization is the studies that are carried out after a bachelor's, diploma or undergraduate degree and enable further training in the same occupation, profession, discipline or complementary or related areas" (Wikipedia).

In other words, specialization enables the perfection of knowledge, and the courses, diplomas, or postgraduate courses taught by various instances are, in general, introductory, where in some cases they are presented as a public audit, or in others, a government audit, leaving both cases conceptual indeterminacy; but the most worrisome is the teaching of public auditing under the same vision of private auditing. Thus, the present author maintains that public auditing, government auditing, oversight, or superior oversight is determined by private auditing. And various authors have stated it indirectly, such as José A. Melían, auditor of the Audience of Accounts of the Canary Islands, who has stated "in general the methodology of the private sector audit is applied".But what has not been clear, and much less disputed, the relationship that can be established between the method and the reality to be investigated.

In science, it is frequent to estimate that the type of reality that one aspires to know determines the structure of the method to be followed, however, in the field of auditing, the problem of reality is avoided, for example, in the II National Congress of Auditing in the Public Sector, referring to the collaboration of private firms, it is stated “The participation of private auditing firms in the control of public management requires that the direction, supervision and quality control of the work, be carried out by the Public Control Bodies ”. It would seem, then, that the problem is reduced to a question of direction, supervision and control.

But no, the issue is more complex, due to the educational, academic and professional system that has so strongly fixed the dominant conception of auditing that it has not required its history. Or, a memory of the past of what has been done or not done in the future of the audit, but it is avoided to present the concrete reality in the control bodies, as well as what happens around the auditors and the audit itself, based on the confidentiality, and discretion, that has characterized the business audit. The background of our present is a loss of the sense of public reality, where an audit lacking historical formation and responsibility has been imposed on us; therefore it is essential to promote the aspiration to build your history,and the watchtower that the Autonomous Bodies of External Control have erected in Spain, represents not only a position from which ideas about public auditing are appreciated with perspective, but also demonstrates an openness that heralds the advent of new times in the audit.

In its genesis, the auditor's professionalization process has been sui generis with respect to other professions. His training has lacked an autonomous character, that is, the teaching of auditing is part of a program as one more subject, but there has been no meticulous study of training those who dedicate themselves to it or intend to do so. And with the emergence of globality and technological development, an intensely participatory citizenry appears that has placed the public as an object of study and analysis, and then, an audit that has practiced under closed schemes faces a new terminology that demands: social control, accountability and transparency. And although the speech in the audit seems to share these notions,as stated in the INTOSAI Strategic Plan Vision 2005-2010 “Promote good governance, empowering SAIs to help their respective Administrations improve performance, improve transparency, guarantee accountability, maintain credibility, fighting corruption, promoting public confidence and promoting the use of public resources for the benefit of their peoples ”, in the conceptual structure of the INTOSAI Auditing Standards does not show or demonstrate how this can be achieved.promote public confidence and encourage the use of public resources for the benefit of their peoples ”, in the conceptual structure of the INTOSAI Auditing Standards, it is not shown or demonstrated how this can be achieved.promote public confidence and encourage the use of public resources for the benefit of their peoples ”, in the conceptual structure of the INTOSAI Auditing Standards, it is not shown or demonstrated how this can be achieved.

Yes, INTOSAI defines that the Report is a “written opinion and other observations of the auditor about a set of financial statements as a result of an audit” (Glossary, INTOSAI Public Auditing Standards), and whether three conceptions underlie the above. that come from private audit, then it is necessary to clarify, first, the schematic audit to the result of an opinion, has placed the audit, and specifically, the public audit in a relativism or subjectivism, as stated by "The professor Javier García de Enterría, in the foreword to The Accounts Auditor: A study of administrative law, by Dr. Carmen Fernández Rodríguez,considers that the objectivity of those who perform accounting review tasks is a matter that fundamentally develops in the field of the subjective "and reiterates when affirming" we have no guarantee that the evidence obtained with our observation will be extensible to any moment in which another auditor made the same check. Actually, there is no certainty of achieving the same result ”.

To the foregoing, it should be answered that if there is no certainty in obtaining the same results in the public audit, it is due to the lack of a method, and that is what has led to the erection of the Tower of Babel that we suffer, where examiners, defenders and experts offer Different opinions on the same case or an audit in the specific that has been presented before a judge, for this reason Robert Cortell, Chief Lawyer of the Comptes Syndicate of the Valencian Community, suggests “The audit reports should also help to clear up doubts, adopting a methodology that allows them to specify the assumptions of presumed accounting responsibility that are detected and leaving due proof in the report. ”

Second, the issue of the Report has been one of the topics of greatest interest to the authors of the magazine Public Audit, a brief sample: “The audit reports of public entities often lack (…) clarity, conciseness, the necessary opportunity and dissemination ”(Montesinos; 1999); “The Budgetary Results, the Treasury Remnants, even the cash stocks are systematically made up” (Álvarez Martín; 2001); "As Dittenhofer (1996) indicates, the credibility of the audit rests on the accuracy and objectivity of the report" (Pucheta and Cortés Fleixas; 2002); “Any report cannot be too short, but needs adequate periods of reflection and analysis” (Mas Cladera; 2007); and,"Reporting on the internal control system of public entities, similar to large private sector companies" (Barrio Tato and Barrio Carvajal; 2008), and apparently the matter of the Audit Report has become a "Gordian knot", so it is possible to assume the position that the problem is not found in the Result, that is, in the Report, but in the Principles, that is, in the Foundations.

As suggested, by guiding “it could be said that the practice of auditing in general has preceded any scientific material that may be called the Audit Theory. In this regard, audit professionals have been engaged in professional practice rather than establishing a number of core assumptions and a body of integrated ideas. ” But also as an action, to the extent that "internal control is done in the interest of the citizens and, consequently, is public and is externalized from the first moment" (although it should be added that external control must also be governed by the public interest and the principle of advertising). So, if we are able to determine and make transparent the notions and practice of the audit from its origin and throughout the process, then,We will be able to respond to and fulfill the INTOSAI Vision.

And third, a public audit that has been pigeonholed in the examination of the financial statements, is an audit that responds to the approach of business auditing. But also, the trend that has been imposed on companies with new public accounting plans has evidenced that registration is a priority based on the concept of recovering order, as a strategy that tries to restore credibility in public administration; and public auditing or auditing of a new account is lagging behind, mired in a thought that fails to distinguish between public and private, as expressed by the President of the Institute of Sworn Censors of Accounts in Spain, when asked: Where should the relationship between public and private auditing be directed? "Towards full cooperation and synergy.

At the end of the day, the techniques and procedures in preparing an audit are the same, whether it is a public or private audit ”; but this collaboration is assumed from conceptual dominance, as stated "On audits in the public sector, it can be said that they are far from what is done in the private sector"; or confusion, "we are faced with several dilemmas that make the supervision of the public sector become a hieroglyph of not a very easy solution"; or to the trivialization of the audit, where the auditor is ordered, like the tailor, to make a tailored suit, that is, to the “client's taste”, in the parody that accounting practice has fallen, when the client asks to the counter, how many are two plus two? And it responds: the ones that you tell me to put. As stated in "sometimes,such experts (professionals in the field) accept - or are forced to accept - more political and partisan 'audits' than using strictly technical methods ”. It should be noted in this last quote, the expression: "strictly technical methods". Because the method is not defined by the technique, however, it is a constant in audit thinking to confuse the method with the technique, even in the INTOSAI Auditing Standards (see in this respect “The sophisms of Intosai” of the present author). And texts that are intended to "guide" students and auditing professionals, point out "The method to be used in the Audit (…) is undoubtedly the scientific method".

In such a way that it has been enough to talk about: objectivity, method, methodology, science, among other concepts, to assume a scientific approach or position in the audit, but it is far from it, derived from its lack of knowledge and rigor. And at the opposite extreme, reductionism that has conceived of auditing as a simple technique, when the problem of public auditing is inserted in the field of social science.

Meanwhile, the culture of "laissez dire" (let us say) is perpetuated in the public audit, based on the alleged authority of the author, the inspection institutions or bodies, or the "experts in the field". Because auditing and public auditing have succumbed to the appropriation of their knowledge by a community of teachers and professionals who present themselves in society as "professionals in the field", by virtue of specific training, and certain qualifications and certifications.

And, then, it seems that it is not worth doubting or questioning, however, science emerges as a constant inquiry, to problematize the knowledge that is presented to us even if it is endorsed by any institution or criterion of authority. For this reason, the history of public auditing must provide elements to know its degree of professionalization, the history of its teaching as a profession, of its genesis and configuration as a practice and professional career that broadens the knowledge of the public, and that gives it meaning to society.

There is a relationship between history and theory, as Raymond Aron (French philosopher and sociologist) says "the theory precedes history, and without the theory of history there does not and cannot exist history". Likewise, without public audit theory, its history cannot exist. And obviously the mention in this regard is almost non-existent, in the articles of the Public Audit magazine, an allusion is found in "The Declaration of Pamplona" by Pilar Jiménez Rius, taken from the aforementioned Declaration, "In fact, the theory of the audit The public has added ecology to the traditional ones ”(Declaration of the Presidents of the Autonomous Courts of Accounts, Pamplona October 19-20, 2006, www.eurorai.org p.3).

But, a theory is an established paradigm that explains most or all of the facts or events using the available data and offers valid verifiable predictions. Or, in science theory is also called a model for understanding a set of empirical facts; for Mario Bunge (1969) "the construction of a scientific theory is always the construction of a more or less refined and consistent system of propositions that unifies, analyzes and deepens ideas" (Wikipedia). So there is no theory or theories of public audit, and reflects the original state in which public audit is found. For this reason, the way for the INTOSAI Vision to become reality is through the construction of the theory of public audit and its history,as a new way to make sense of the audit.

And a beginning is to build the history of the magazine Public Audit, in the understanding that this reality cannot be apprehended globally or totally, but is only a partial approach to the complexity of an editorial process, but that in some way represents its reality. So the following story is presented below:

Source: Hemeroteca de la Revista Auditoría Pública (www.auditoriapublica.com).

Scope: From Number 1 to 48.

1. Participation regarding gender.

Number	1 to 10	11 to 20	21-30	31 to 40	41 to 48	Total	%
mens	134	89	111	84	72	490	80
Women	twenty	24	36	22	twenty-one	123	twenty

Note.- Each of the articles was counted in terms of the gender of the authors, regardless of whether they had participated in previous issues. And, in 4 articles the gender of the authors was not determined due to the lack of a full name: Number 29, 11 authors; Number 30, 5 authors; Number 32, 5 authors; Number 36, 4 authors. (However, the trend is a greater participation of men, which would reflect an increase in their percentage).

2. Regarding the debate.

Analytical table on the use of citations or references

	From 1 to 10	From 11 to 20	From 21 to 30	From 31 to 40	From 41 to 48	Total
Articles c / references	eleven	13	43	37	38	142
Articles without references	100	83	65	46	33	327
Articles reviewed						469
Items not checked º	3	3	0	4	0	10
Total Articles						479

Notes:

It is understood by reference, the magazines, bulletins, or notebooks, published periodically. And the use of citations or references, represents in the first instance, the condition to generate debate or discussion, because obviously writings without references cannot generate controversy.

Articles not reviewed for not opening files.

Comparative table between the Public Audit magazine and other magazines

(Use of citations or references)

	From 1 to 10	From 11 to 20	From 21 to 30	From 31 to 40	From 41 to 48	Total	%
Public Audit magazine	3	5	14	13	twenty-one	56	18.4
Other magazines	13	17	69	77	72	248	81.6
Total	16	22	83	90	93	304	100

Analytical table of Other magazines

Magazine	Number of Articles in which the Magazine is cited
Budget and Public Expenditure	twenty-one
Spanish Journal of External Control	14
Spanish Economy Papers	13
AECA Newsletter	12
BOE	10
Spanish Public Treasury	7
Double match	6
Management and Analysis of Public Policies	6
Local Analysis	5
Spanish Journal of Financial Law	5
23 magazines with 2 to 4 references	68
81 magazines with 1 reference +	81

+ Including INTOSAI's International Journal of Government Auditing.

3. Regarding the form

Section	From 1 to 10	From 11 to 20	From 21 to 30	From 31 to 40	From 41 to 48	Total
On the front page	53	7	0	0	0	60
The OCEX Today	14	one	0	0	0	fifteen
Accounting	eleven	13	17	10	eleven	62
Budget management	eleven	0	0	0	0	eleven
Legality	12	14	14	fifteen	twenty	75
Audit Tools	4	6	one	0	0	eleven
Operational Audit	5	14	3	0	0	22
Without Section	10	7	0	3	0	twenty
Privatizations	0	5	0	0	0	5
Public Audit Conference	0	3	0	0	0	3
The Audit in Public Audit	0	4	0	0	0	4
Administration Admin. Public	0	eleven	4	0	0	fifteen
Servs cost. Public	0	3	0	0	0	3
Public Sector Challenge	0	0	4	0	0	4
Training	0	0	4	0	0	4
Audit and Control of Public Management	0	0	32	0	0	32
New technologies	0	0	5	10	0	fifteen
Control of Local Entities	0	0	7	0	0	7
Cooperation between different levels of control	0	0	4	0	0	4
Control and Management of the Local Sector	0	0	6	0	0	6
Audit and Management of Public Funds	0	0	9	57	44	110

Accounting and Legality: The only sections that remained constant.

conclusion

The overwhelming male participation in the Public Audit magazine reflects, not only the gender inequality in the thought of the audit (same that seems to be explained by the cultural and social factors that permeate all professional careers), but also the specificity of a practice that has been established without the exercise of debate, as this requires that it be public and open on equal terms. Then, how the inspection entities try to become an example of transparency and accountability if their practice constitutes unequal relationships.

Basically, the contradiction is an essential feature in the reality of the audit, and it is demonstrated when INTOSAI establishes that one of its core values ​​is Innovation, however, in the Introduction of the Strategic Plan, it states “The strategic plan of the INTOSAI is more evolutionary than revolutionary. " But innovating means introducing novelties or radically altering things, and on the contrary, evolution is a progressive movement that simply develops the characteristics or principles that are implicit in biological reality, more by extrapolating the evolutionary vision to the field of Social faces the difficulty of explaining the emergence of rupture, leaps, and revolution.

So, how to promote debate, participation and theoretically strengthen public auditing, if the majority of articles do not cite other ideas, if the majority percentage of references is about other journals that are not intended for public auditing, if among 469 articles reviewed there is only one reference to the INTOSAI dissemination body and this is called Government Audit, if the editorial development shows a thematic dispersion that is not only a matter of form but of substance because it is not clearly presented that Public audit is the fundamental object given that the accounting and legality sections are not perceived to be connected with the problem of auditing and when subsequent thinking is sometimes carried out it develops in parallel lines without ever touching,and if in general bibliographic research leads to repetition in submission to the criterion of authority, ignoring that this task has a propedeutic purpose that exhibits the sources that support the thesis or sustained hypothesis and is the bridge to systematically accumulate and organize experiences alien to the researcher, but that in no way this resource constitutes the central objective.

Attempts have been made to found, rationalize, and justify public audit on a set of standards based on the general acceptance of audit institutions and audit organizations, as if the very fact of accepting said body could be authorized to eradicate doubt and dissent, and is what explains the lack of search for theories. Because what is sought in public auditing is uniformity of thought, although it denotes deficiencies and lack of rigor.

So neo-Enlightenment should be promoted in public auditing as a movement that dispels darkness, fear of the word and the unidirectionality of a thought that has not assumed that public auditing must be public, and then, we could generate the conditions of the emergence of the lights of the debate held in reason and science, and with it, build the history of public auditing in relation to the future of its administration through, not only proposing to give answers to actions, behaviors, and results observed, but through the auditor's ability to generate questions, and the inquiry or exploration becomes a process of knowledge, by reversing its classic vision of auditing by assuming the role of audited, and thus responding to who audits the auditors? The history.Because by changing the roles, equality is fulfilled, otherwise the public audit discourse will only serve to justify power.