Ensuring Quality

The office’s work is performed in accordance with the Government Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. These standards provide guidelines for staff training, audit planning, fieldwork, quality control systems, and reporting of results. In addition, the standards require that external auditors periodically review our office’s policies, procedures, and activities to ensure that we adhere to these professional standards.

Relevant and Timely

We perform work which meets the needs of City Councilmembers, the Mayor, department heads, and citizens. 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