This article presents information about public budgets for a health system, called SIOPS, and it's basic features. It briefly comments a SIOPS's strategy of collect data, and it exemplifies some of it's potential as an instrument for helping health management. SIOPS focuses on information about the financing and expenses of public health in municipalities, states and in the Union, being therefore a unique data bank in the social policy field in Brazil. The data bank is growing on a steady basis and is as well improving in terms of information reliability. It produces information increasing in regularity and quality. The SIOPS is presented as an important data source for researches of health policies, as an instrument for control agencies to exert the attendance and fiscal inspection, and as an instrument for managing and evaluating the actions for the Unified Health System (SUS). The infomation retrieved by SIOPS will eventually further develop management, spread the well-succeeded experiences among the states, and balance the distribution of expenses between investments and costs, as well as the distribution of resources among government levels.
Health system; Public gudget; Control agencies; Public health financing; SIOPS
