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NLPES News
National Legislative Program Evaluation Society
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-Albert Schweitzer |
FROM THE TRENCHES
Rob Krell (WA)Note: This is the first installment of what we hope will become a continuing feature of the NLPES newsletter; a profile of one of our rank and file members. Because we all do generally similar work, there is much we have in common. But there is also great diversity among us. We hope this feature will help illuminate who we are, both in terms of the common threads that bind us together, and the unique perspectives we each bring to our work.
Meet Rakesh Mohan: Washington State Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee. Many of you in the NLPES community already know Rakesh. He has been working in the field of performance auditing since 1988, and Washington is his third stop along the way. Rakesh is also the NLPES liaison to the American Evaluation Association, and chairs that organization's State and Local Government Topical Interest Group. He recently conducted a training session on "Legislative Performance Auditing and Evaluation" for staff of the Federal Senate of Brazil.
Q. Rakesh, you started in Agra, India (site of the Taj Mahal), and now you're in Olympia. Recognizing that you could likely write a book on the subject, can you give us the highlights of how you got from there to here?
A. In 1976, I came to the U.S. to pursue my doctorate in chemistry. After three years of unsuccessful attempts at universities in Michigan and Kansas, I abandoned the idea and accepted a job as a chemist with the Kansas Department of Transportation in Topeka. Later, I moved to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. As part of broadening my horizon, I took a few public administration courses just to see if I'd like them. I ended up getting my Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Kansas, and was fortunate to get a job with the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit. It was the beginning of a new career for me! After four good years there, an opportunity to get supervisory experience and to make contributions to a newly created division enticed me to accept a position with the Louisiana Office of the Legislative Auditor. After five rewarding years there, I accepted my current position with the Washington State Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee in 1998.
Q. Probably not too many NLPES members have had the opportunity to work for three different member offices. What are some of the notable differences you've observed in how different offices function?
A. Definitely, there are differences in the offices I've worked for. They range from basic things like the type of evaluations that are done, and whether they're called performance audits or program evaluations, to more substantive differences like how staff interact with members of the legislature. There are also some basic differences in how study results are reported, and to whom. And different offices follow different standards, for example, the "Yellow Book" versus the "Red Book." But despite all the differences I've observed, I don't always see it as a matter of any one way of doing something being necessarily better or worse than another way. Rather, it's often a matter of each office developing its own way of doing things in order to best meet the needs of their particular legislature.
Q. You've been working in this field for twelve years now. Have you noticed any changes in the field of performance auditing per se - any evolution? Or do you find things are pretty much the same as when you've started?
A. I think there have been a lot of changes, and they're for the better. One of the most notable is the emphasis on performance measurement and accountability. They weren't even talked about when I began my auditing career in 1988. Even more significant though, I think many offices are far more customer oriented than they used to be. There seems to be much more of an emphasis on what we can do to meet the needs of our legislatures. Making our reports shorter and more reader friendly is just one very visible example of this.
Q. On a daily basis, what are some of the major, work-related challenges you face?
A. Developing meaningful evaluation criteria can be a major problem. There are a lot of programs where the benefits might be very real, but they don't lend themselves to easy measurement. And of course, many programs don't collect data that can be used for measuring outcomes. Another huge challenge can be trying to convince the auditee that we're really there to help them. I know that's an old auditing joke, but it's something I really do believe in. I don't think of it as a joke because I've been involved in
many projects where we were really able to help the agency. And if we could convince the auditee of that up-front, it could make our job a whole lot easier.
Q. You're the NLPES liaison to the American Evaluation Association. How are the two organizations - NLPES and AEA - alike, and how are they different?
A. Certainly they're alike in the sense that they both exist to further their professions. NLPES is a great organization, but understandably, its focus is pretty much limited to legislative program evaluation. AEA is much broader in that it focuses on all types of evaluation. And consequently, it's a much bigger and I think more diverse organization. But despite the differences, I'd like to see more collaboration between the two groups, particularly in the area of training and conferences. I think there's a lot we could learn from each other.
Q. Are there any big issues in AEA that NLPES members should know about?
A. Actually there is one that people might want to be aware of. There is a movement within AEA - it's not universal, but it's fairly strong - to promote formal certification for evaluators; something along the lines of Certified Public Accountants.
Q. Rakesh, what do you hope is in your future, professionally speaking?
A. I thoroughly enjoy the work I'm doing, but I would eventually like to get my doctorate, probably in political science. If you remember, getting a Ph.D. was the reason I came to the U.S.A. in the first place. Another thing I would love to do is to be involved with legislative staff of other countries. Last year, I had the opportunity to provide training on performance auditing to staff of the Federal Senate in Brazil, and it was the highlight of my professional life. I was extremely impressed with their commitment to improving the public policy process.
Q. You've had many stops along your career path. What do you miss most about India, Kansas, Louisiana - and what do you like most about Washington?
A. India is in my blood and soul. I miss my family, friends and the daily cultural experiences. I miss the folk and music festivals of Louisiana, and the social circle we had in Topeka. As far as Washington goes, my family and I like the natural beauty, ethnic diversity, and laid-back lifestyle of the Puget Sound area. We plan to make Washington our home now.
Q. Before we let you go, and without prying too much, what about your non-work life?
A. Other than keeping up with the "honey-do list," playing dinosaurs and trains with my four-year old son, and taking my 14 year-old daughter to shopping malls, there is not a lot of free time. When I find some, I love to travel, take pictures, listen to music, and read biographies.
The Epitome of Checks and
Balances
Gerald W. Hoppmann (KY)
During the past year as Director of Performance Audit for Kentucky's Auditor of Public Accounts (an independent office outside the legislative branch of government), I've had to rethink a statement I made over ten years ago to the Dallas Regional Manager of the General Accounting Office (GAO). He asked me why I applied for a job with his office. Being right out of school and full of theories and constructs, it didn't take me long to answer definitively. "Working for a legislative oversight entity is the epitome of checks and balances." I still remember the pleased look on his face as well as several nods of affirmation coming from others seated at the interview table.
The reasoning behind my statement to the regional manager remained solid as I finished my stint with the GAO and went on to work as a program evaluator and performance auditor in various states within the legislative branch. Much of what I learned from the GAO dovetailed nicely with the policies and procedures of state legislative audit shops. Clearly, the work I did with GAO and as a legislative program evaluator and performance auditor in other states epitomized checks and balances.
Now, can we say the same for the work performance auditors or program evaluators do within the executive branch? After all, some of us work for elected or appointed state auditors in agencies that are not part of the legislative branch of government. Although the work we do is mechanically no different than the work conducted by those in GAO and in various other state legislative audit shops, does the fact that we audit within the executive branch create a precarious political environment unbecoming of the badge of "epitome of checks and balances?" And, could this cause some to view our audits as less objective?
The key to answering these questions is based on similarities and differences between executive and legislative branch oversight entities. Let's focus on one of each.
In Kentucky for example, our performance audit shop is no different than those within the legislative branch, related to standards. For example, we use the GAO Government Auditing Standards to make sure our audit process is objective, complete, and based on factual evidence. We're very careful not to politicize our process and even more careful to report what we find to a wide variety of individuals from all branches of government as well as the citizenry. This helps to ensure that we enact a true check on executive branch agencies and programs.
A difference between our performance audit shop and other shops within the legislative branch is that we are not bound to a formal selection process for our performance audit topics. Ideas for performance audits come from a wide variety of players in Kentucky. For example, topics for performance audits are selected by the Auditor of Public Accounts based on requests from the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Legislative Research Commission (LRC), legislative committees, individual legislators, legislative staff, the Governor and other constitutional officers, cabinet level officials, the citizenry and advocacy groups.
This process gives us wide latitude when selecting audit topics, which allows us to work outside the realm of traditional constraints normally associated with a legislative committee or advisory group structure. Our ability to prioritize these requests, coupled with the breadth of audits we conduct, enhances our objectivity and accountability to the taxpayer. In other words, our audit shop can use resources in areas that are more responsive to a wide variety of customers.
So, we're back to earlier questions related to the epitome of checks and balances. The overall answer seems to be that given the proper use of standards, which helps to build a framework for the mechanics of the performance audit process, as well as latitude related to the selection of audit topics, executive branch audit shops can produce very effective reports. That is, they can produce reports that epitomize checks and balances.
Audit shops outside of the legislative branch of government are not
all that different from their legislative counterparts. I will concede
however, that there are differences such as reporting to an oversight committee
or advisory group, topic selection, and phrasing of legislative recommendations.
These differences may indeed cause comparison and contrast. However, related
to what epitomizes checks and balances, oversight appears to be oversight
regardless of the branch of government.
| You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him to a heavy
load.
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Beyond Year 2000: Crime @ Internet Speed
The following is an article reprinted with permission from Jon
Huntress (jon@year2000.com), publisher
of Tenagra's Year2000.com email newsletter. http://www.year2000.com/
In the rush to implement e-commerce and related computer integration, businesses and government agencies are finding that their systems are increasingly at risk, and that there is a corresponding surge in hacking, cracking, and fraud schemes of every description. Unlike the Y2K bug, where it seemed the government was very late in identifying and dealing with the problem, the government is actually ahead of the curve and of public knowledge and perception regarding Internet crime. They are already putting in place initiatives that will allow a systematic approach to identifying and fighting criminal activity on the Internet. Part of the solution was announced when Attorney General Janet Reno held a news conference in Washington announcing the creation of the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) last week (http://www.ifccfbi.gov). The IFCC is a model of how the government is dealing with computer crime. It is a public/private partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). Anybody who thinks they are a victim of an online fraud can register a complaint on the IFCC secure Web site. The complaints will be logged and analyzed to determine the jurisdiction, and the information will be disseminated to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Any law enforcement official can search the database for fraud patterns and similar activities in other areas.
The reason this is so important is that by using the Internet, criminals can commit a large number of small crimes in many different places that would never be prosecuted by local authorities. If you live in Lincoln, Nebraska and get stiffed in an online auction by a seller in Georgia, who has jurisdiction? If you lose a couple hundred dollars, your local police aren't going to be too enthusiastic about chasing someone who lives a thousand miles away. But with the IFCC, your local police can run a check and find that the same fraud has been done dozens of times by the same person, and with a phone call they can bring in the Feds. Interestingly enough, the federal agency doing the most to prosecute online criminals is the Post Office. Their domain is national, and at some point in almost every fraud, the mail is used. (The Post Office also has authority if UPS or FedEx is used in the transaction.)
Because the Internet is global, the cooperation between local, state and federal officials needs to be extended worldwide. There are some really interesting international problems that are surfacing right now. In France, a couple was being investigated for a crime against a French business. The evidence was in their e-mails, and their service was AOL. The French authorities asked AOL France for their e-mail addresses and received them. Then they asked for the mails and got a response from the FBI asking why they were wanted. The French authorities wanted to know why the FBI was interested in an investigation of two French citizens and a French company, and what possible right they had to stick their nose in. It just so happens that all the AOL e-mail records are on servers in Virginia, just a few miles from the FBI headquarters. AOL cannot provide those records unless told to by our government.
A similar thing happened in Canada when all the e-mail records for a company were requested during the discovery process in a lawsuit. The company refused the request because the mail resided on a server in Ohio. The Canadian firm outsourced it's e-mail because it was cheaper, not to thwart a legal challenge, but that's the way it worked out. Of course a company can easily outsource all of it's IT functions to India. You see how internationally complicated this can get?
The Federal Trade Commission reported that more than 18,000 people complained they had been cheated on the Internet last year. Just over half of these complaints were about online auctions, but there are also securities frauds, investment and pyramid schemes, and identity and credit card theft to watch for. The authorities are finding that all of the old scams such as a Ponzi scheme work just as well and sometimes much better on the Internet.
Another issue is cyber stalking, especially against children and teenagers. One of the problems here is what was called the "backwards introduction of technology," where the children are often much more technologically aware than their parents. I will also cover some nasty new offshore frauds, and cybercrimes committed against companies by insiders. There are huge losses in this area, and many companies who are creating Intranets are not paying enough attention to security. In one company, all of the employees had read, write and delete access to the master vendor file.
The Internet seems to be a vast place where anonymity is the rule, but actually almost everything can be traced if there is a high degree of cooperation. But we have so far to go. How many hackers are there and what are they doing? It was pointed out that the major thrust of our judicial system is to control violent crime. We solve 80% to 90% of murders, but with hacking we don't even know how big the problem is. I will give you one chilling finding:
The Department of Defense wanted to know how secure their systems were so they created a hacking team to find out. The team attempted to break in 38,000 times. They actually got in 24,700 times. But the scariest thing was the intrusions were only detected 788 times and of these, only 247 were reported to their supervisors.
Those aren't very good odds. Stay tuned...........
Calendar
December 1- 3, 2000
Fourth Annual Health Policy
Charlotte, NC
Hilton Charlotte and Towers
December 4- 6, 2000
The Business of E-business: Audit, Control & Accounting in a Dot.ComWorld
Caesar's Palace
Las Vegas, NV
January 15, 2001
NLPES Newsletter ArticleSubmission Deadline
February 2001 NLPES
Newsletter Distribution
Spring 2001, No. 78
Posing Questions and Posting Answers
Joel Alter (MN)NLPES Communications Committee
An ongoing challenge for NLPES is how to help rank-and-file program evaluators in member states improve their day-to-day work. It tries to do this, in part, through the fall training conference and sessions it sponsors at the NCSL annual meeting-but a limited number of people have the opportunity to attend these sessions and benefit directly from the discussions.
This year, the NLPES executive committee has tested what it hopes will be another way to share information about agency practices. Since May, we have been posing a "Question of the Month" on the NLPES listserve and website (monthly, you may have guessed).
At the end of each month, we collect the responses and post them on the NLPES website.
For instance, in May we asked: "What interesting approaches has your office used to improve teamwork and collegiality among staff?" A quick review of the responses may give you and your office some ideas about things to try. For instance, Wisconsin established "The Elaborators" (Easing into the Legislative Audit Bureau Over Refreshments And Talk, Etc. = ELABORATE). This group of staff helps new employees become acclimated to working in the office. Florida had an office "carnival day" to celebrate the completion of a batch of projects-including Office Jeopardy, miniature golf, blackjack tables, etc. Michigan has an in-house awards program every six months. Hawaii has an annual Halloween costume party in the office. You'll find many more examples at the "Question of the Month" website. (www.ncsl.org/programs/nlpes/question/question.htm).
In June, the "Question of the Month" asked about various approaches that staff have used to increase survey response rates, and it asked for staff opinions about what response rates are acceptable. In August, we asked staff to comment on whether the development of agency webpages has changed the way agencies write or present their reports. Responses to each "Question of the Month" are archived on the NLPES website-so you can check any previous month's responses.
Over time, we will try to pose a variety of questions-related to research methods, office policies and procedures, agency management practices, staff development, etc. And maybe we'll occasionally throw in a few questions for pure entertainment value (for example, maybe we should ask you to tell us how many program evaluators it takes to put in a lightbulb).
The success of the "Question of the Month" depends on your participation. So, if you're not on the listserve, please join it. This is the best way to get notified about each new "Question of the Month." When a new question is posed, take a few minutes to send a brief response to the question author. Ideally, we'll get lots of individual staff members to contribute a few nuggets of wisdom each month.
Also, get in the habit of checking the NLPES website periodically. In addition to the "Question of the Month," you can also find multi-state information on staff salaries, report follow-up practices, and the backgrounds of evaluation staff. (See www.ncsl.org/programs/nlpes/research/multstat.htm) Also, there is a site that lists innovative practices and products of NLPES member agencies. (See www.ncsl.org/programs/nlpes/research/bestprac.htm)
In sum, the executive committee hopes that efforts like the "Question
of the Month" can facilitate an exchange of information about issues relevant
to program evaluation and performance auditing-informing agency staff about
practices used elsewhere, or providing a forum for staff opinions on issues
in the field.
| Failures are like skinned knees--painful, but superficial.
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NCSL 2000 Conference Information
So,.......you didn't make it to NCSL in Chicago?
Well, you're in luck! Washington JLARC and Texas SAO attendees have posted summaries of several of the sessions that they attended on the NLPES website. Check it out!
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