Which Tools Are Needed to Assist Audit Managers in Project Portfolio Selection When Divergent Views Emerge?

Abstract

In Brazil, government programs differ in terms of territorial coverage, of sectorial action, and vary according to regional contexts. Similarly to other public auditing organizations, the Ministry of Transparency and Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) is responsible for monitoring the application of funds in these government programs as a means to promote transparency and accountability in public spending. In order to fulfil this mission, it is necessary to select the audit projects to be executed by the CGU teams. Severalmultidisciplinary teams and stakeholders participate in this process of selecting auditing projects across distinct management and public policies themes, with different opinions and views arising. The most important challenges for CGU are to compare the audit projects submitted by these teams on a common and transparent basis (under the presence of scarce resources) and to consider in the selection of projects the divergent and often conflicting perspectives of those involved. In this study, we explore which tools from the multicriteria portfolio decision analysis and negotiation literature can be used to inform a transparent and negotiated selection of audit projects, as well as discuss which type of multicriteria portfolio decision analysis models and features for negotiation should be combined in future research.