Accountability of research projects: an analysis of reports and internal controls in a support foundation in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes whether the accountability reports of research projects financed by FAPDF (Research Support Foundation for Distrito Federal), Brazil, meets the legal requirements. To this end, 116 accountability reports related to application guidelines for the period of 2008 to 2010 were analyzed. For a better understanding of the evidence obtained by the previous stage, interviews were conducted with researchers benefiting from the application guidelines, whose data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and principles of content analysis. The results obtained by the analysis of the accountability reports show the existence, more frequently and persistently, of reservations arising from: 1) the use of financial income without authorization (34.5%);2) non-presentation of the three budgets for capital items (23.3%); 3) non-presentation of all bank statements; and 4) non-use of nominative check for payment of expenses (33.6%). The results of the interviews corroborate that such evidences are driven by the lack of clarity and difficulty of understanding the established rules by the application guidelines. To do so, it is concluded that there is a need to adopt control mechanisms that monitor the use of public resources, as well as the mapping of occurrences of reservations in accountability reports.

Keywords

• prestação de contas
• fundação de apoio a pesquisa
• recursos públicos
• controle interno.