Monday July 22, 2013
The State Auditor's Office raised concerns about internal control procedures at Texas State University. No money was missing but apparently various compliance working papers were not as they should be. This is surprising given that the staff at Texas State no doubt regularly attends such meetings on such matters. But it just goes to show that an itnernal audit funciton is important to provide assurance that external auditros will be happy.
On a far more serious note, U S Marshals have lost some 2,000 encrypted radios. The Marshal service blamed it on poor record keeping. Besides the millions of dollars of lost equipment, this raises the question, who has the radios now? Clearly this is a problem if the radios are in the hands of terrorists or other criminals. But who knows, maybe all the rados are gone in which case none of the marshals are talking on them anyway!
The old saying holds sway, when it is everyone's property, it is no one's property. When I was an internal auditor for the City of Austin in the 1970s, it was determined that 160 lawn mowers were missing. Apparently employees simply walked off with them.
We study internal control in accounting. There ineeds to be an identification system for such equipment. A group independent of the users, such as internal auditors, needs to conduct surprise audits to verify the existence of the assets. When users know they are subject to such scrutiny, they act in a more responsible manner.
This is a test, a student reported not being able to post a comment.
Posted by: Dennis Elam | July 22, 2013 at 05:14 PM