RE: Accurate Reporting ?
Ted Noftall 7:23 AM
to Ray, gkisela
Ray,
Re Audit: No utility fraud News Journal June3,2013
Why did your article, the lead story on the local page start out with the word Audit: ??
You sat through all the Council debates regarding the need to investigate recent happenings in the Port Orange utility department. If you were paying attention during those debates including the presentation by Carr Riggs & Ingram you know full well they were not engaged to perform a forensic “ Audit.” CRI made perfectly clear in several responses to direct questions they were not going to be performing an ‘Audit “ Rather they were engaged to performing a far less structured “Consultation”
It is bad enough that Manager Kisela feels the need to deceive Port Orange residents by describing CRI’s efforts as a “ forensic audit” but your article did not need to let that falsehood go un-corrected.
In an earlier e-mail you reminded me that you do not have the luxury of incorrect reporting. That being said ……
When may I expect to see your correction ???
Regards,
Ted Noftall
Hank: as I understand it, after considerable probing, in an audit, the auditors statements are attested to, by the auditor, in a forensic consultation (which is what we agreed to) the auditor gives you their opinion, but does not attest to their findings. The auditors told us as did city management that a consultation was better because the auditors were free to give us more advice and direction on how to address the problems.
Unhappily we did not get well organized and clear advice on how to address the problems their partial analysis revealed. For example, it is often murky whether problems uncovered are a result of poor or lacking policies, or failures of individuals to abide by policies. The report does not provide any hints of who is responsible for failures in controls. The report does not suggest whether failures are a result of problem of competency or willful neglect.
The forensic consultation only addressed some of the financial functions — mostly those we knew we had problems with…their observations were fairly clear, the problems we thought we had were confirmed and probably are worse than I originally thought.
I don’t think we received our moneys worth. They did not provide a roadmap for change and correction. They identified policies needed but did not suggest actual wording. Most importantly since this consultation was for council, they did not provide use with a checklist or guide that we could use in several months to see if needed changes were in fact implemented.
Ted, I too have called it an audit, and knew that I might be wrong. After all the discussions about audits and consultations, I was confused. But, now I know. Merely a consultation, not an audit.Then there is a mere audit and then there is a forensic audit. I understand that the auditing and consulting companies have gotten together and made their own rules of what can be concluded in the different categories. Am I correct about that. — hank