This article aims to analyze how public managers from different Federal Higher Education Institutions (IFES) established in the State of Pará perceive the maturity of internal controls in organizational structures based on a maturity model adapted from the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CO- BIT 4.1) and the COSO II framework (internal environment; goal setting; event identification; risk assessment; risk response; control activity; information and communication; and monitoring), contemplating in: Initial, Basic, Intermediate, Advanced and Optimized maturity levels. For this purpose, a multiple case, quantitative and qualitative study was carried out, using descriptive statistics to calculate a maturity index. The results showed that, although there are asymmetries between the IFES, they are between the intermediate and advanced levels of maturity. Based on that, a set of practices is suggested to help them evolve in this direction, as well as research efforts able to unveil the factors that condition the differences identified by this study.