The new frontiers of reporting for governmental financial sustainability

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Abstract

This work is part of the academic debate focused on the information inadequacy of public administrations and the consequent need to imagine an overall reporting system for a fruitful dialogue with the reference community. Financial sustainability requires the implementation of policies that ensure the feasible provision of public services to the present generation, while protecting the needs of future ones, thus ensuring intergenerational equity. Such information does not normally fall in the domain of traditional financial reports; therefore, one naturally questions how information about financial sustainability can be disseminated to the users of local governments. For these reasons, governments should be interested in developing an integrated popular report (IPR). The present research, using a theoretical-deductive methodology, proposes some characteristics and content that an effective integrated popular report should contain in order to respond to the information needs of public sector user groups — citizens, in particular. The research objective can be summarized in the proposition of IPR as a new transparency and communication tool for citizens, which simplifies the existing voluntary reporting in order to jointly acquire the unique benefits of integrated reporting (IR) and popular reporting (PR).

Keywords: Integrated Popular Reporting, Governmental Entities, Financial Sustainability, Citizen, Transparency, Accountability

Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.; Methodology — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.; Investigation — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.; Resources — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.; Writing — Original Draft — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.; Writing — Review & Editing — F.A., D.T., A.R., and M.R.F.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

JEL Classification: M41, M40, M21, M14

Received: 26.01.2022
Accepted: 05.04.2022
Published online: 07.04.2022

How to cite this paper: Agliata, F., Tuccillo, D., Rey, A., & Filocamo, M. R. (2022). The new frontiers of reporting for governmental financial sustainability. Corporate Ownership & Control, 19(3), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv19i3art4