Assessing it as a Key Success Factor for Accrual Accounting Implementation in Greek Municipalities

Inadequacy of Information Technology (IT) enabled solutions has constrained the implementation of accrual accounting in Greek municipalities as part of a New Public Management (NPM) initiative. In this paper we analyse the main reasons behind the failure of IT to support the accounting reform and describe how the problems of software solutions were overcome with the assistance of an IS/IT assessment model, based on the general systems theory principles. We present an IS/IT evaluation approach, which adopts a systems perspective in order to provide evaluation criteria for both functional and behavioural aspects of the IT solutions adopted to support the new accounting practices. The described approach provides empirical evidence related to the effectiveness of systems oriented thinking in devising evaluation frameworks for assessing IS/IT solutions employed to support contemporary accounting practices in Public Sector organizations. The reported work contributes to the literature (i) an IT assessment case study in Greek public sector, (ii) a novel evaluation framework suitable for both functional and behavioural aspects of financial management information systems and finally (iii) comprehensive experience from its application in Greek municipalities