Lei de Newcomb-Benford como instrumento de análise e controle das despesas públicas

Abstract

With the growing need to control public accounts, in order to mitigate the possibility of
fraud and corruption by the Administration and with the rapid evolution of information
technology used today, it is necessary to find tools that enable effective and continuous
control of public expenditures. Thus, the objective of this work was to empirically verify how
the NB Law could contribute to the analysis and control of public expenditure. For this, a
quantitative, qualitative and exploratory research was carried out in an accounting model
based on the relationship between the aforementioned Law and the Hypothesis Tests X²-test
and Z-test, evaluating 93,825 efforts, of a Public Institution of the State of São Paulo, in the
years 2017 to 2019, a period in which there was a legislative change that influenced the
behavior of expenses. In general, a non-compatibility of the data collected with the Law was
observed, with considerable statistical variations for the first digit seven of the 2017 and 2018
fiscal years, demonstrating evasion from bidding and smaller differences for the digits
extracted from the 2019 expenses, exercise with the updated legislation, confirming that the
change in limit values ​​for the acquisition of products and services had a profound impact on
the distribution of the digits referring to public expenditures carried out by the Entity. The Law
brings important contributions to the assessment and monitoring of public expenditure,
serving as an auxiliary instrument for control work, especially with regard to planning and the
definition of prominent data to be verified in order to identify relevant distortions.