The power of the crowd

This is an interesting story about the power of crowd sourcing. I wonder if it would be possible to crowd source audit work!

Shining a light

I've always felt that our job of shining a light had intrinsic value.  At least someone was looking and by our "shining a light" maybe others would too.  Here is another who has the same believe in a different milieu.

Social Media Performance Measures

Here is an interesting story about the Washington Post trying to adjust to the digital age. "Employees are schooled in the lingo of web traffic."  (p.2)  Interesting things to note:

• 35 different daily reports track traffic to different parts of the web site
• Editors receive a performance alert each day telling them whether the site is on track to meet its traffic goals
• Even if traffic is low to some pages, if the online visitor is from a government suffix web site, who they consider a main audience, they will support those pages

Makes me wonder how government should be looking at traffic.

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 ?

Newspaper Headline

Never thought of an audit slapping something.

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.

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."