Auditing procurement contracts for defense material in Spain: In the footsteps of the U.S. model

Abstract

In Spain contract auditing has been applied since 1988 to determine the final cost of defense procurement contracts. In this respect, the Spanish Department of Defense takes the US methodology as a reference model, and therefore it may be useful to study the degree of convergence between the two models. The main objective of this paper is to analyze the degree to which the US contract auditing model for the procurement of defense materiel has influenced the system applied in Spain. Accordingly, the comparative method is used to highlight the main features of the contract auditing models used by the Spanish and the US Departments of Defense. The results obtained show that the methodology used by Spain is not an original approach, but that there is only a low degree of convergence with the US model.