Italian Local Governments and Costs Control

Abstract

The Legislative Decree n. 286/99 establishes different typologies of management control for the Italian Local Governments. As a consequence, management information systems play a crucial role in the resource allocation process.

More specifically, the information system has to take into consideration two dimensions: the ability to satisfy the service request, and the cost control. Indeed, services are provided thanks to public resources and imply a citizen sacrifice.

This paper focuses its attention on current or potential costs control tools. Despite the above mentioned decree, evidences from a field research on thirty Italian Local Governments highlight a poor usage of cost information systems.