by Olga Ovcharenko, Certified Government Auditing Professional at City of Austin, Texas
Our Office seeks to assist City Council and citizens in ensuring that our local government is accountable, transparent, and cost-effective. To achieve our mission, we provide audit and integrity services. We have staff with various backgrounds and specializations. Our office consists of public affairs specialists, accountants, law specialists, people with the knowledge of information systems, psychology and economics. Among the certifications we hold are CIA, CGAP, CPA, CFE, CISA, etc. Staff from our office actively participate in several professional audit organizations, including the Association of Local Government Auditors (A.L.G.A.), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Government Accountability Office’s Intergovernmental Audit Forums, and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
What are we looking at?
Our audits cover the full range of local government performance issues, to evaluate how well the City:
- Accomplishes goals;
- Provides quality customer service;
- Operates economically and efficiently;
- Reports on the accuracy of financial and performance information;
- Safeguards assets from loss, damage, or inappropriate use;
- Complies with laws, regulations, policy, and grant and/or contract terms;
- Develops and maintains competence and integrity of staff;
- Ensures equity internally and in service delivery.
How we do it?
Our project is normally a four stage process: pre-survey (where to look, why to look and what to look for), survey (gathering data thru interviews, information systems, literature, etc as well as selection of focus), fieldwork (data analysis, audit findings, search for cause and effect of selected conditions) and reporting. Among the tools we use are:
- Benchmarking
- Comparison to best practice
- Performance measures
- Flowcharting the process and identifying weak elements
- Statistical analysis
- Surveying and many others
As a part of the Office of the City Auditor I worked on the following projects:
E-Government efforts of the City of Austin
This report provides the results of our audit of the City’s e-Government initiatives, which began back in the 1990s and are currently undergoing renewed efforts. We found that the City’s current efforts are not completely documented and are missing an executive-level sponsor or leader who is known to all involved parties. We have issued four recommendations aimed at ensuring that the City’s e-government initiative is fully documented and explained to all involved parties, and that department directors identify the organizational readiness of their employees and processes.
Water Conservation II: Reliability of Proposed and Current Conservation Stragies
Our objective was to assess the reliability of projected water savings from proposed conservation strategies being presented to the WCTF, including the underlying assumptions, algorithms and methodologies used to develop the projections, as well as to assess the reliability of reported water savings from current conservation strategies.
APD Recruiting and Training
At the time of our review, APD had implemented 21 of the 28 tested Police Executive Research Forum recommendations, 6 were in progress, and 1 had not yet been implemented. We found that while the Austin Police Department (APD) has been working to recruit more minorities and women, more effort is needed to achieve a police department that mirrors the demographics of the Austin communityWe also found that APD has implemented a course of action to improve the training curriculum and adopted procedures to continuously evaluate the training program according to the PERF recommendations.
Small and Minority Business Resources Department
We found problems in the area of certification, specifically as it relates to the accuracy of data on certified firms maintained by the certification agency that processes certification of Minority-Owned Business Enterprise (MBE) and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) for the City of Austin. Furthermore, SMBR’s oversight of the contract with the certification agency was weak and we found problems with the completeness of documentation of certification eligibility maintained by the agency.
Hotel Occupancy Tax: Collection and Remittance Audit, Phase III
Of the 33 hotels selected, 4 demonstrated compliance and were assessed no additional tax liability. Our audits indicated that these 28 hotels owed additional taxes ranging from about $650 to $25,290. Total deficiencies are close to $186,000.
Property Tax: Annexations Follow-Up
This report presents the results of our follow-up work on the Property Tax: Annexations audit issued in 2003. The purpose of this follow-up work was to verify whether City planning staff has completed analysis of properties along Lake Austin that are currently exempt from paying City property tax to determine whether to maintain the exemption.
Hotel Occupancy Tax: Collection and Remittance Audit, Phase II
This audit examined 28 hotels to determine whether they were properly collecting and remitting City hotel occupancy taxes. Of the 28 hotels selected, nine demonstrated compliance and were assessed no additional tax liability.Our audits indicated that eleven of these 13 hotels owed additional taxes ranging from around $300 to $298,000. Total deficiencies were approximately $508,000.
Impact of Economic Downturn on Financial Control Positions
Ethics Structure
Reliability of Advantage Financial System 3
Awards:
- T.E. Lawrence Award (2006-2007) for Police Recruiting and Training Audit
- Award for Greatest Quantitative Impact (2006-2007) for Hotel Occupancy Tax Audit
- Award for Greatest Qualitative Impact (2006-2007) for SMBR Audit
- Award for Greatest Quantitative and Qualitative Impact (2005-2006) for Hotel Occupancy Tax Audit