Ensuring Quality

Our goal is to provide the City with audit and evaluation services which are useful, objective, and accurate. We strive to perform relevant and timely work that follows rigorous professional standards. Our office is independent of the Mayor and the City Council in selecting assignments, conducting work, and writing reports.

Relevant and Timely

We perform work which meets the needs of the Mayor, City Councilmembers and Department Heads. We strive to plan our work so that it is relevant for important meetings and hearings and before additional funds are committed or lost. To determine which reviews we should undertake we assess City departments, organizations, programs, activities, and functions using the following criteria:

• Level of City Council, Mayor, public and media interest
• Relative risk and exposure
• Significant environmental changes
• Service management problems
• Quality of internal controls
• Risk of losing outside funding
• Historical problems or concerns
• Potential of audit topic to benefit more than one department
• Professional Standards Ensure Reliable Products

We are guided in our work by the Government Auditing Standards and the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing. These standards include requirements for scoping and planning our work, determining and explaining our rationale for selecting a review's objectives, scoping and methodology, selecting the criteria we use to evaluate the matters subject to audit, and ensuring that our evidence is sufficient, competent and relevant.

City Auditor is Independent

To ensure the objectivity and reliability of the Office of City Auditor, the City Auditor is independent of the Mayor and City Council. The City Auditor is hired by and reports to the City Council. The Auditor's independence is established by the fact that he or she is appointed to a four year term and can be removed from office only for cause - i.e., misconduct - by a majority vote of the City Council. The current City Auditor started her term in June of 1998.