Proceedings

Poland, a different solution has been introduced, which means the committees operate
on the level of ministries, not the local units.
On the level of local government the internal audit organization and coordination is
the responsibility of the borough leader, mayor, or the city president. It should be
noted that as far as these institutions are concerned, a certain degree of freedom was
given by the Minister of Finance, which results in a variety of internal auditor
activities in the whole public finance sector. This is due to decentralization, and
consequently the ability of the management to take decision on certain issues in a
manner independent of the government.
The third level of internal audit organization in the public sector consist of, listed in
the Act, public sector entities and local government units which accumulate
substantial public funding or carry out significant public expenditure. Conducting
internal audit in those institutions is a requirement imposed by the legislature. The
coordinating body of their activities are individual ministers and appointed by them
audit committees.
Another important issue in the functioning of internal auditing in public finance sector
is the position of internal auditor and internal audit unit within the organizational
structure (Winiarska K., 2006, p. 261). According to the Public Finance Act,
institutions of this sector were obliged to ensure that the internal audit unit has
organizational autonomy through direct subordination to the head of the organization
in which this unit operates. Internal audit activities, in accordance with the Public
Finance Act, are coordinated by an internal auditor employed by the head of the
institution (Art. 277, 280). Subordination of business in this area is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Organizational subordination of internal audit in public sector
organizations
Internal Audit
Unit
Internal auditors
Head of organization
The chief audit executive
Tasks of the Audit Coordinator
(Source: Authors' research)
The organizational structure presented in the figure should operate in any public
sector institution. In fact, the organization and place of internal audit and the internal
auditor in the organizational structure of units is varied. This mainly concerns the
subordination of the internal audit unit and the subordination of the internal auditor.
An analysis of data collected in Poland by the Audit Department of Public Finance
Sector, Ministry of Finance shows that (Kubik A., 2005, No. 1, p. 35):
� single positions of internal auditor is mostly created,
~ 123 ~
other people called
Assistants Internal Audit