Users of Local Government Annual Reports: an Exploratory Study

摘要

The nature of financial reporting in the public sector in Australia has undergonesubstantial change in the last twenty years. One result has been the promulgation ofpublic sector accounting standards based on the private sector conceptual framework forgeneral purpose financial reports. A central key to this framework is the existence ofusers and their needs. This framework emphasises the provision of information for usersfor the purpose of decision making. Critics of the framework as it applies to the publicsector claim that it lacks empirical substantiation and ignores the complexity anddiversity of public sector institutions. This paper examines and analyses the annual reportdistribution lists for local government authorities within Queensland and providesempirical evidence on distribution patterns. The study finds that there are user groupswhich fall outside the categories identified by the conceptual framework. Further, thereis a wide variety in the dissemination lists of local government authorities and crosssectional differences in the distribution patterns for urban and rural local governmentauthorities. The results of this research raise important questions for public sectoraccounting regulators regarding the appropriateness of assuming that there exists ahomogeneous set of users for all public sector entity types.