Avaliação de políticas públicas no Tribunal de Contas do Estado do Ceará: uma análise da aplicação da NBASP 9020 nos relatórios de auditoria operacional da área da saúde

Abstract

With the process of converging international auditing standards, the Courts of Accounts in Brazil have been expanding their scope of action to contribute to the improvement of government activities. They have moved beyond controlling the legality and regularity of management acts and have begun conducting performance audits, known as operational audits, to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, economy, and impact of public policies. More recently, the Courts of Accounts have been challenged to carry out more comprehensive evaluations of public policies, incorporating more qualitative aspects. In this process of converging international auditing standards, in 2020, the NBASP 9020 was introduced into the Brazilian Public Sector Auditing Standards (NBASP), requiring the Courts of Accounts to evaluate public policies by measuring not only performance criteria but also other criteria such as utility, relevance, needs, and socioeconomic impacts of public policies. Thus, this dissertation aims to analyze how public policy evaluations conducted by the Court of Accounts of the State of Ceará (TCE-Ce) meet the new criteria for evaluating public policies provided for in NBASP 9020. For this purpose, qualitative methods were used to understand the public policy evaluation process at TCE-Ce from various perspectives, including its establishment, trajectory, and the perceptions of the involved actors. To achieve this, an in-depth analysis was conducted along three axes, as proposed by Lea Rodrigues (2008): content, context, and trajectory. In addition to this methodological approach, a meta-evaluation of selected operational audit reports in the health sector, conducted after the implementation of NBASP 9020 at TCE-Ce, was carried out. For this evaluation, bibliographic and documentary research was conducted, along with data and information collection through semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the evaluation process at TCE-Ce, in person. The goal was to understand the evolution of the evaluation process at TCE-Ce and to what extent the health sector’s Operational Audit Reports were able to assess the new criteria outlined in the Public Sector Auditing Standard (NBASP 9020), as well as to explore future perspectives for this evaluation model by the Courts of Accounts. The results showed that the health sector audit reports were able to assess some of the new criteria in the NBASP 9020, but in a limited manner. Generally, the results focused on evaluating the achievement of goals and compliance with health management regulations, representing a result-based evaluation approach. Therefore, the need to advance new methodologies capable of evaluating the new criteria of NBASP 9020 was identified.