The Regional Administrative Inspectorate (IAR), created in 1981, is the strategic central service for control, auditing and inspection of the Regional Government of the Azores, acting under direct supervision of the Vice President. The IAR possesses several attributions in the administrative and financial areas, being its responsibility to check the fulfilment of the obligations imposed by law to the regional administration and its autonomous entities, to the local autarchies of the Region and equated entities. It is also the Regional Administrative Inspectorate’s responsibility to inspect on the usage of European funds made available to public and private entities of the Archipelago and to value the performance of the Services. Other abilities may be occasionally determined by the Regional Government under the government’s responsibility for all public associations and enterprises. 

In this context, the IAR develops inspections, auditing, inquiries, investigations, simple processes of verifications and the direction of disciplinal processes. It is still its responsibility, namely, to study and to propose measures that aim at a bigger efficiency of the services subjected to its intervention, as well as to collaborate with other services of control.

The IAR integrates, by need of law, the System of Internal Control of the Financial Administration of the State, being the Regional Inspector, a member of its Coordinating Council.

The IAR has its seat in Angra do Heroísmo and develops its action in the whole territory of the Region, as well as on the regional public utilities existent outside that territorial space.

The IAR is directed by a Regional Inspector equated according to law to General-Director, and it comprehends an inspecting and auditing body and a nucleus of administrative support.