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From the start of the 21st century, the New Public Management movement has gained momentum in Belgium. Thus, the Copernicus reform and then the laws of 2003 attempted to modernize the Belgian public sector. The latter will undergo an accounting reform which, in time, will enable it to have three types of accounting : budgetary accounting, general accounting and cost accounting. The first two are mandatory, but the third is optional. Between 2007 and 2012, the FEDCOM project was set up to implement these measures, while respecting European regulations. To technically support this project, an ERP was developed bearing the same name as the project. Since 2012, general accounting has been developed. Cost accounting, on the other hand, was not made compulsory, so few organizations have developed it. The objective of this research is to examine the reasons behind these choices. We are also interested in the usefulness of a cost accounting system in the entities that have adopted it. To this end, we decided to conduct a qualitative survey of the heads of the accounting departments in their Federal Public Service. When cost accounting was implemented in the organization, the heads were accompanied by the cost accounting manager. We managed to cover the majority of the entities that compose the Belgian federal administration (11 out of 15). The objective was to understand both the decision-making and operational aspects. We also took care to analyze the situation of cost accounting applied to the public sector in other countries.
Our study revealed that the modernization of Belgian federal accounting is constrained by the
predominance of budgetary accounting. Indeed, top public servants still and always focus their thinking on the budget. As long as budgetary accounting remains a management tool, there is no real room for cost accounting to take a leading part in the management of the organizations. Nevertheless, we have identified various uses for cost accounting, such as pricing, full costing, building monitoring, etc. Although cost accounting has several uses, it is far from being a privileged management tool: its usefulness is limited to particular uses, in addition to the information already provided by traditional systems. Moreover, the growth in accounting obligations, in particular with the addition of general accounting, combined with the reduction in financial resources have led the departments to focus on their core business. The priority given to cost accounting has therefore been revised downwards, in order to give priority to legal obligations.

cost accouting --- public organization --- FPS --- FEDCOM --- new public management --- service public --- comptabilité analytique --- service public fédéral --- SPF --- SPP --- Police Fédérale --- administration fédérale --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Comptabilité & audit