Monday, October 24, 2011

Auditing the DoS

I just can't fathom an auditor performing an audit of the military. Here is an audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction. The first sentence in the summary is a statement that the work was impaired by the lack of cooperation of the Department of State. Auditors had to write the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton to gain cooperation. And then auditors found "only a relatively small portion of program funds—about 12%—will be used to pay for advising, mentoring, and developing the Iraqi police forces." The rest of the funding was for security and life support. The auditors state "Without specific goals, objectives, and performance measures, the PDP could become a “bottomless pit” for U.S. dollars intended for mentoring, advising, and training the Iraqi police forces." Where else could you find this type of information? And what must it be like to do audit work in this climate ?

Friday, August 5, 2011

Long Summer

Auditing is a lonely business. It helps to work on a team who can appreciate and congratulate you on your work, but at some point you must speak up. The information in an audit is not always welcome but it must be said . That is why we work so hard on clarity and conciseness - to communicate the results and to be prepared for that moment. Most times, the satisfaction of being a voice of accountability outweighs the loneliness.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Saying it succinctly

Here is an interesting post that could be applied to writing summaries, press releases and communicating to Council. "And yet, that constraint has its virtues: it forces you to be concise, to figure out what you really need to say and skip the rest, to find turns of phrase that are shorter and usually plainer."

Thursday, March 3, 2011

More About Boxes

I have written before about moving the boxes as it relates to what level of government provides a service. If a service isn’t working at one level of government, move it to another. Decision-makers or critics often look for an organizational solution when there is a problem. Related to this is the tendency to create another management structure by moving the boxes when the current arrangement is not working.

In my previous position there was an elected executive who also had legislative responsibilities. She was the top administrator, that is, responsible for implementing policy, yet also part of the legislative body with other elected officials. This worked great when those who were elected to the positions could maintain positive relationships and were dedicated to good government. There were times when that was not the case. I can remember having conversations with a newspaper editor about wouldn’t it just be better if the executive position was separate and perhaps appointed. I would come back with “It’s the people not the boxes.”

In my current position, the top executive/administrative position is appointed by the elected body. The person in that position made our work easier because management was receptive to our audits. He valued our audit work as another piece of important information. Not once has he been defensive about our findings or interpreted them as a statement about his performance. I am hopeful that a person with similar qualities can be found now that he is leaving because I know from past experience that it’s the people in the boxes, not the box, which makes the difference. I have my fingers crossed.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Audit Title Understatement

I don't know how I happened upon this Inspector General's report (It's from 2007), but I couldn't believe the understated audit title "The Department of Justice's Internal Controls Over Terrorism Reporting." This was an audit of the quality of the statistics reported about terrorism. The audit found that the FBI and Department of Justice both under- and over-reported statistics. Causes were such things as poor queries of the database, inaccurate coding, and lack of documentation to support the incident to be terrorist-related or occurring in the time period reported. They found "that the collection and reporting of terrorism-related statistics within the Department is decentralized and haphazard." A more interesting title might have been appropriate.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Love/hate relationship with numbers

Recently my daughter told me she hated numbers and math. We were talking about being a financial auditor. I had to agree with her. It feels like my head will explode when I sit for very long in front of a spreadsheet ensuring that all the numbers are accurate and add up.

But I love numbers when they can illustrate a story or a concept. And that's why I like performance auditing. In performance auditing, the goal isn't to just opine on the accuracy of numbers (although we do make sure of reliability before we conclude), the numbers tell you how important a finding is or communicate new perspectives.

Here's an example - Don't jump to conclusions about the census.