State General Accounting

The State Accountant General ensures the unified management and coordination of activities of the General Accounting Office and the system of subsidiary Accounting Offices.

He is appointed by the Government on the recommendation of the Minister of the Economy and Finance; he guarantees the unified management and coordination of activities of the RGS system. He is responsible for the accuracy and prompt registration of accounting entries and for the service of the accounting verification on the entire State administration.

His peculiar institutional position reflects both on his legal status and the functional configuration, giving him a largely atypical position in the framework of state administration management. Indeed, from a legal point of view, it should be noted that the State Accountant General (already classified in a higher category than the Director-General pursuant to the Decree of the President of the Italian Republic number 748 of June 30, 1972, granting him the senior management level B), as the Head of the RGS Department, performs the functions indicated, in general terms, by the rules referred to in article 5 of Legislative Decree number 300/1999 for this institutional figure. From a functional standpoint, it is important to emphasise the relative functional autonomy granted to this figure by the accounting system.

The State Accountant General is indeed assigned important responsibilities of his own. In particular, the regulation for the administration of assets and for the General State Accounts entrusts him with:

a) the supervision of central and peripheral Accounting Offices, to be exercised either by means of provisions both through audits and inspections (art. 162 comma a and 174);
b) the responsibility for the "accuracy and promptness" of the registration of accounting entries and for "effective service of the accounting verification on the entire administration of the State"; as well as the power to arrange the "appropriate references to the individual Accounting Offices" when irregularities of any kind are detected (article 167).

He is also assigned important advisory and investigative functions, including the proposal for approval by the Minister of the Economy and Finance of the regulations, instructions and other measures in the field of accountancy (article 161 comma b); proposing candidates to the Minister for appointment, by decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, to executive positions in general offices of this level of the Department of the State General Accounting Office.

The Accountant General is by right a member of many councils, committees and other collegiate bodies.

This system of skills, knowledge powers and coordination of public financial events, personal responsibility with respect to the activity of professional accounting, as well as the particular senior management position of accounting staff, make the State Accountant General a figure of peculiar importance among the central state administration bodies.