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NLPES News
National Legislative Program Evaluation Society

Chair's Corner
A Misuse of the "Separation of Powers" Principle
Effect of Term Limits on Evaluation and Audit Organizations
Using the NLPES Listserve
South Carolina Profile
Small Shop Talk: Challenges of Training in a Small Shop
Using Internships as a Recruitment Resource
NCSL 2001 Annual Meeting & Exhibition
Identifying New Ways for NLPES to Meet Members’ Needs
Office Happenings
NLPES Fall Training Conference
Getting Along With the Auditee
Calendar of Events

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Chair's Corner

As NLPES chair, a person has only three opportunities to impart words of wisdom through our newsletter, the NLPES News. In preparing to write my final column as NLPES chair, I reviewed past issues of the NLPES News to glean words of wisdom written by past chairs whose terms were winding down. Each past chair seemed to have the same comment— "I can’t believe this year has passed so quickly!" I can only "ditto" that comment. It literally seems like only yesterday that the Executive Committee was meeting in Chicago early one morning to plan the NLPES agenda for 2000-2001.

The NLPES theme for this past year has been the future of legislative program evaluation and auditing. Our fall training conference held in Austin, Texas highlighted the work of Max Arinder’s NCSL futures task force. Those sessions helped us to realize that our legislatures, as foundational institutions of government, will experience dramatic changes over the next twenty-five years. It will be important that we, as evaluators and auditors, carefully discern our roles as those changes occur around us. The work of the NLPES Emerging Issues Committee (see page 9) took on the difficult task of "gazing into the crystal ball" to view the NLPES of the future. The Committee’s work will assist the NLPES Executive Committee as it takes steps in the future to make our organization more service and user friendly to member states. We must always learn from the past, but continue to work toward the future.

When my term as chair ends in August, I will switch "hats" and take on the job of editor of the NLPES News. I encourage you to submit articles for publication in future issues of our newsletter—otherwise I’ll have to start begging. One of our strengths as evaluators and auditors is the collective experience and expertise of our colleagues in other states. The newsletter is an excellent forum in which to share that expertise.

Thanks to each of you who has made my job as NLPES chair enjoyable. To the members of the Executive Committee, I especially say heartfelt thanks for your willingness to take on assignments and complete them with style and perfection. Best wishes to Joel Alter as he assumes the chair’s position in August. Under his leadership and that of other Executive Committee members the future of our staff section is certainly bright!

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A Misuse of the "Separation of Powers" Principle

In January, my office issued a program evaluation report on Minnesota’s district courts. Previously, we have issued reports on court-related functions (such as guardians ad litem services, probation services, and sentencing guidelines), but this was our most direct review of the courts’ operations. When the report was issued, judges and legislators generally thought that it was informative and fair.

But in the months prior to the report’s release, some judges and court staff questioned whether our review violated the Minnesota Constitution’s separation of powers provisions. In fact, some judges met with the chair of our legislative audit commission and cited a 1997 Supreme Court decision from Missouri to bolster their case. They said that the court’s decision in this case raised concerns about the authority of the legislative branch to conduct management audits of agencies in the executive or judicial branches.

A decision by another state’s supreme court would not, of course, have any direct legal effect in Minnesota. On the other hand, courts often borrow ideas and logic from decisions in other states. So, we reviewed the Missouri case more closely and (in my humble and non-lawyer opinion) found it less than compelling.

In 1995, the Missouri Joint Committee on Legislative Research directed its Oversight Division to conduct a management audit of the State Auditor’s office. The Oversight Division sought access to the State Auditor’s workpapers, but the State Auditor challenged this request. A trial court sustained the legislative agency’s claim of authority to conduct a management audit, but the Supreme Court reversed this decision.

The Supreme Court said, "We hold that [the] legislature has no authority to post-audit the management performance of a co-equal department of government." It said that the legislature can legally try to control agencies by passing laws, and it can require agencies to provide it with information that would facilitate the law-making process. But the court said that it violated the separation of powers provisions of the state constitution for the legislature to conduct studies of agencies’ performance. The court said: "The line the constitution draws in giving the legislature power to make and the executive the power to administer the law… demands that the legislature gather its information in a hearing designed to consider pending legislation, not in a post audit designed to manage, control and supervise executive decisions directly."

Furthermore, the court said that a legislative committee could not expand its information-gathering function to include "oversight"—noting that oversight is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as "watchful care: general supervision: management." The court said: "The ‘management audit’ in section 23.160.1 pushes the Joint Committee beyond obtaining financial information to offering opinions about the way the agency does its business, which is an attempt to operate the agency… [and] it is not the legislature’s business to operate executive agencies."

The Missouri court’s view of appropriate legislative "oversight" is extremely narrow, to say the least. It is certainly a view I have never seen articulated before, either in a legal opinion or in scholarly considerations of legislatures’ responsibilities. Indeed, for the past several decades, legislatures at the local, state, and federal levels have moved to expand their oversight activities, including greater use of performance audits, program evaluations, management studies, and information system audits. Generally, citizens and scholars have applauded professional, nonpartisan oversight of this sort as a way to strengthen accountability and improve governmental operations.

I find it particularly odd that the Missouri court’s opinion was built on the idea that audit recommendations are requirements that an agency must follow. The court states its position clearly, saying that the "management audit" initiated by the Missouri Legislature was an attempt to take control—to "operate the agency." This has certainly not been my experience in Minnesota, nor do I think it is the reality in any state or federal legislative audit agency. Under any kind of audit—financial, management, or performance—the organization being audited always retains the ability to dispute and even reject any finding, conclusion, or recommendation.

I also find it disturbing that the Missouri court tried to establish a legally binding definition of "audit" and, yet, showed no understanding of well-established auditing standards and practices. For decades, even traditional auditors have done more than simply examine financial transactions. Generally accepted auditing standards in fact require auditors to do more than check transactions. Auditors must, among other things, consider "management's philosophy and operating style" (as well as management’s policies and practices) to gain an understanding of the organization’s system of internal controls.

It is worth noting that the Missouri Supreme Court’s opinion apparently has had little, if any, effect in Missouri. According to Jeanne Jarrett, staff director of the Missouri Legislature’s Joint Oversight Division, the Division is "still fully operational," with staffing levels and a work agenda undiminished by the court’s decision.

Ms. Jarrett told me that, after the court's decision, her office tried to show some deference to the court by making recommendations to the legislature rather than to the agencies. "We operated on the theory that the court thought it was improper for auditors to offer management or program suggestions directly to an agency…because the court seemed to think that would be us trying to control the executive branch," she said. "But, over time, we have come back to making recommendations to the agencies. It just doesn't make sense to say the law needs to be changed if the problem is with the agency. The bottom line is the legislative branch appropriates a lot of taxpayer money and has an obligation to make sure it is used well by state agencies. How can they not do oversight? The public expects it even more in today’s world, not less."

In the final analysis, I think the Missouri case is not a threat to legislative oversight in Minnesota or, frankly, anywhere else. The decision is so ill founded and poorly reasoned that I cannot imagine another court using it as precedence or even as the intellectual basis for another decision. On the other hand, I think officials that support strong legislative oversight should be aware of the decision and prepared to argue against it. If the position of the Missouri Supreme Court were to spread, our system of "checks and balances" and accountability could be seriously weakened.

If you are interested in reviewing the September 30, 1997 Missouri Supreme Court decision (State Auditor v. Joint Committee on Legislative Research, et al.), it can be found at 956 S.W. 2d 228.
 

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Effect of Term Limits on Evaluation and Audit Organizations

Heather Moritz (Moritz is a Managing Legislative Auditor with the Colorado Office of theState Auditor)

In the 1990 general election, 71 percent of Colorado's voting public cast their ballots in favor of a constitutional amendment limiting terms of service for state senators and state representatives. The term limitation, eight consecutive years for either house, applied to terms beginning on or after January 1, 1991. Consequently, it was not until 1998 that Coloradans began seeing the effects of the 1990 constitutional amendment. In that year, however, term limits caused over a fourth of Colorado's 100 state senators and representatives to leave the state legislature.

Today, organizations like mine, the Colorado Office of the State Auditor, continue to face new challenges and opportunities in dealing with a term-limited legislature. Overall, our mission and focus have not changed. We still strive to provide legislators, state managers, and members of the public with timely, accurate, and relevant information about state agencies and programs. However, some aspects of the way we do business have changed. The following are some of the things we've noticed.

Challenges:

Legislators no longer have the institutional knowledge they once did. This change means that we need to spend more time providing background information and context on the issues that we raise in our audit reports and oral presentations. It also means that we need to interact with legislators more frequently and in settings that may seem foreign to us (e.g., new legislator orientation).

Legislators do not have the time to become experts in a particular policy area. This change means that we need to work harder to make our reports and presentations more conversational, easy-to-understand, and above all else...brief. Balancing this charge with the competing need to provide more background and context on issues can be quite challenging at times.

Legislators no longer serve on one committee for a lengthy period of time. This year, six of the eight members of our oversight committee were "new," i.e., they had never before served on the Legislative Audit Committee. Prior to term limits, we could generally predict how individual committee members would receive a report on a particular subject because we knew their legislative histories, policy interests, and so forth. We no longer have the benefit of years of experience with individual legislators. This change makes it more important for us to strive for balance in our audit reports and oral presentations.

Legislators are looking for legislation to carry. Term-limited legislators know that the clock is ticking on their legislative careers as soon as they take their oath of office. Audit reports provide a wealth of well-researched topics that are often ripe for legislative action.

Legislative turnover means we get a fresh perspective on our own business operations. We wouldn't be good performance auditors if we weren't constantly looking for ways to improve our own operations. New faces around the committee table mean fresh ideas for audits and novel perspectives on how we research and report information.

South Carolina Profile

Governing Body: A council composed of five public members and four ex-officio legislative leaders.

Staff: 18

Year Established: 1975

Years (Almost) Abolished: 1992, 1993, and 2001

Background of Auditors: Public Administration, English, Business Administration, Accounting, Law, Finance, Education, Journalism, and History. (Plus a Ph.D. in Sociology)

Best Things about Living in South Carolina: The beach, the mountains, the Spring, the Fall, the Winter, and Lou Holtz (USC’s football coach)

Friendliest Telephone Greeting to a Government Official: "Hello Darling" (said by deputy director to a senator whom she thought was her husband)

Favorite Perk of Auditors: Audit team being treated to lunch by the audit manager when an audit has been released

Strangest "Building" for Agency: The Patriots Point Development Authority has its offices in an aircraft carrier (The USS Yorktown). Adding to the adventure: an expectant auditor climbing little steps to different decks.

Worst Sound on an Audit: The clang of prison doors behind you (fortunately the Department of Corrections kept letting the auditors back out!)

Not For The Faint-Hearted: During our review of state-owned property, we visited three old, deserted cemeteries, two for mental patients and one for prisoners.

Best Audit Response: In a reply to an audit, one agency stated that our findings were "false," "unsupported," "offensive," "absolute nonsense," "have no basis in fact," "unrealistic," "impractical," "absurd," "patently unfair," "irrelevant," "inaccurate," "laughable," "astonishing," and "totally without merit or support." Hey, BEAT THAT!

Most Obvious Sign You’ve Overstayed Your Welcome: An agency had an auditor’s car towed after being instructed to park there

Most Interesting Statistic About Our Staff: 50% of our staff are GRITS, Girls Raised In The South!

Best Example of Audit Chutzpah! Insisting to a college President that we had to see the renovated bathroom in the President’s home even after he said this was an invasion of his privacy

Three Musketeers (Or Is It Three Stooges?): Three of four auditors hired on 10/17/83 are still with the agency

Best Office Purchase: A scanner so that we can print the director’s signature on any document we want

Title of Director’s Autobiography: "The Longest Surviving Yankee Audit Director Tells All."

Farthest Distance Traveled By An Auditor: Our Assistant Director traveled to Hong Kong for an NCSL Staff exchange program.

Best Turnaround: The attorney for a contractor criticized in one of our audits said "Basically, I find it ludicrous that grown adults with college degrees can write this garbage." She later became an agency head and responded to our audit of her agency by saying "As a general comment, we find the report to be fair and balanced."

What We’ve Learned about the Press: The finding that took the least amount of work always gets the biggest headline.

Closest Brush With Death: Our director once got his tie caught in the office shredder

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Small Shop Talk
Challenges of Training in a Small Shop

Wyoming’s program evaluation section does, indeed, qualify as a small shop. With turnover and two new positions, I suddenly had a staff of six, half of whom were new, plus increased legislative expectations for performance. Quickly, we needed to reach common ground and a shared vocabulary. This could happen if everyone heard the same information at the same time. The problem? Very little training is available in our area, and none that would directly address these specific issues.

Staff who had taken courses from the Government Audit Training Institute (GATI) recommended a course content and one particular instructor. Serendipitously, we learned the instructor teaches a course entitled "Team-Developed Audit Reports." Sounded like just the ticket. And it was: this training last summer was pivotal in our staff’s professional development.

First, though, there were a couple obstacles to overcome. One was our rather limited training budget. It took some maneuvering to encumber part of one year’s budget for expenditure in the next year, but this was finally approved. Then we had to deal with GATI. After a month of phone calls, we were finally able to convince them to come to Cheyenne to train 7 participants, even though they typically require a minimum of 15 to come on site.

So, the stage was set. The instructor could adapt some of the material to suit our specific situation and assured us that the course content would quickly bring new staff up to speed without boring the more experienced members. She asked for a computer and multi-media projector so we could work as a group to revise material on a big wall screen.

We worked 8 to 5, Monday through Friday, and covered a lot of territory in those five days. For starters, we got a refresher on the four stages of an evaluation (survey, planning, field work, reporting), the purpose of each stage, the product that should come out of each, and how each contributes to a "total communication logic" for the report. Each phase can move the project forward and focus the work for the next stage. An ordered process can bridge the chasm between research and writing by organizing and focusing information in consecutive steps. This helps avoid having to make one huge effort at the end.

The course reinforced some useful specifics. For one, keep executive summaries brief (1.5 to 2 pages), since reading this part of the report may be a one-time shot for busy readers. Then too, there’s a difference between targeted and undifferentiated data gathering, the latter being "data-gathering with a steam shovel." And the importance of planning: when we’re most under pressure is when we most need to have a plan, because that’s when we can least afford the time to re-do any mistakes.

For this training, the "hierarchy" in our section was leveled and everyone had a different but equally important role. We tackled the exercises and a case study as a team, with the goal of getting everyone’s best contribution and coming to agreement on outcomes we could all live with.

About mid-week came a unit on interpersonal relations. It focused on the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect among team members, since respect is a central element in team performance. Successful group interactions tend to move through a series of phases: forming, storming, norming, and performing. The secret of storming is not to fear this phase, but to harness the power of disagreement and make use of the energy. In other words, aim for "smart storming."

Nearly a year later, have we incorporated any of this learning into the way we do business? Yes. For example, the course gave us a tool to use when launching into a new project. Holding an "initial review conference" makes the survey process more systematic and purposeful by solidifying information and analysis early on. It is a way of getting team agreement on fundamentals: who is the customer, what are the known areas of concern, what questions does the survey need to answer, what type of data is needed, where can we obtain it, and how long will survey take? By the way, it should be clear why the instructor called this "the point of maximum ambiguity."

Was dedicating a year’s training money the right thing to do? Yes. Would we recommend this path for another shop faced with major personnel change? Again, yes. It fulfilled the original purpose of giving staff a common, neutral foundation and reference point, and this in turn has contributed to more shared understanding. We continue to reference the training regularly and work on incorporating more of the concepts. If curious about GATI as a training resource, check out the website at
www.grad.usda.gov.

If your office handles new employee training differently, I think readers would love to know about it, so please consider writing a column for the fall edition of NLPES News!

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Using Internships as a Recruitment Resource

The problem of not having a sufficient number of qualified applicants for position vacancies is not unique to the Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA) or other NLPES affiliates. The absence of qualified applicants has been an even greater problem over the past couple of years with a strong national economy, business expansions, and the flow of high salary dollars. The attrition rate for OPPAGA varies between 10-15% each year. While some employees migrate to the private sector or out of state, we have found that Florida state agencies, the Governor’s Office, and other offices within the Florida Legislature often lure OPPAGA employees away because of their experience and qualifications. While this can be viewed as a compliment to OPPAGA and to our employees, it leaves us in a continuous mode of recruiting, screening, interviewing, hiring, and training of new employees.

In an attempt to ensure a sufficient pool of applicants, OPPAGA has advertised position vacancies in the local and statewide newspapers, professional journals, at campus job fairs and professional conferences, and on the Internet. We have also made classroom presentations at colleges and universities about the work of OPPAGA and have conducted symposiums at our office for students. While each of these venues has resulted in applications, the applicants have not always been of the caliber that OPPAGA would like to attract. After examining the source of our applications and finding that some of our "good" applications were coming from our interns, we began working to improve our internship program to attract and groom other potential employees.

The purpose of OPPAGA’s internship program is twofold. It provides "real work" experiences for the student, and it provides OPPAGA an opportunity to evaluate whether the student has the skills or is developing the skills that are needed for full-time employment. An added benefit to the hiring of interns, as fulltime employees, is that it can reduce the time required for new employee training.

OPPAGA has had a paid part-time internship program for a number of years that primarily attracted students enrolled in the Masters of Public Administration program at Florida State University. Based on our experience and knowledge that interns were a good source of qualified applicants, we decided to expand the internship program to other academic programs, other institutions, and to create a competitive full-time Summer Internship Program. The decision to expand the internship program to include interns from other academic disciplines such as business administration and urban and regional planning seemed like a natural progression due to our practice of hiring staff from a variety of academic programs.

OPPAGA’s internship program was further expanded through a competitive full-time Summer Internship Program. In initiating the competitive full-time Summer Internship we wanted to attract high caliber students who could not participate in our regular internship program because of other time commitments or distance from the office. Applicants are required to submit the standard employment application and a 1,000-word essay, on a specified topic, which is used in selecting the best applicants. For either the part-time or the full-time Summer Internship program, OPPAGA hires students whose coursework is such that when they complete their academic program would be qualified for OPPAGA’s entry-level analyst position. The part-time and the full-time Summer Internship programs appear to be good sources of qualified applicants. While we do not hire all of our interns for analyst positions, we do hire two or three applicants from the part-time internship program each year. We have hired three of the eight students who participated in the full-time summer internship during the past three years.

The biggest challenge we have faced within our internship program is ensuring that the graduate students get a quality training experience at the same time that they serve the production needs of the office. We recognize that allowing the students to participate in team meetings, meetings with management, interviews, field trips and other key discussion points will give us the best sense of how well they would perform if we hire them as an analyst. To the extent possible, we try to assign our students as project team members, but their part-time schedules and the school calendar sometimes creates a hindrance to success in this area. In addition, many analysts find it easier to assign low-level tasks (copying, data input, internet research) to the graduate students, activities that do not give us as clear a picture as to the student’s potential as an analyst. Due to these factors, we have found that it is very important to actively manage and monitor the graduate students’ assignments to make sure they are getting a quality internship experience

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NCSL 2001 Annual Meeting & Exhibition

NLPES will sponsor several sessions and activities during the NCSL Annual Meeting, as described below

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Identifying New Ways for NLPES to Meet Members’ Needs

Joel Alter (Alter is a Principal Program Evaluation Specialist with the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor)

Over the past year, the NLPES Executive Committee has received many suggestions about things that NLPES should do—or at least consider doing. These range from small things—like getting summaries of NLPES training sessions posted to the NLPES website more promptly—to larger things—like considering whether NLPES should "certify" evaluators in member states.

Last fall, NLPES Chair James Barber formed a committee to consider the merits of suggestions such as these. Committee members included Don Bezruki (Wisconsin), Rob Krell (Washington), Heather Moritz (Colorado), Mary Noble (California), Jim Pelligrini (Montana), John Turcotte (Florida), Nancy Van Maren (Idaho), and me. This "Emerging Issues Committee" developed an action plan earlier this year, and the Executive Committee is now pursuing many of its suggestions.

Our committee members agreed that NLPES has strong foundations on which to build—including things like our excellent newsletter, website, listserve, and training opportunities. We also reminded ourselves that NLPES is a voluntary organization that relies on the efforts of member states. We developed recommendations about ways to better serve NLPES members, but we also cautioned the Executive Committee about taking on tasks that are unnecessary or beyond the organization’s capabilities.

There was a consensus on the Emerging Issues Committee that NLPES should do a better job of systematically identifying "best practices" of member agencies. As a result, the Executive Committee plans to survey legislative program and audit agencies regarding aspects of how they do their work. The initial survey will ask about a limited number of topic areas, and subsequent surveys can explore others. By this fall, responses from the initial survey will be posted at the NLPES website. In addition to asking states about "best practices," this survey will also ask states to identify "hot topics" for legislative program evaluation—ranging from topics that some states have successfully tackled to new issues that are ripe for evaluation research.

The Emerging Issues Committee also considered whether NLPES should play a larger role in member agency peer reviews. Our committee decided not to propose that NLPES develop its own standards for peer reviews or a single peer review process for all states to use. But, particularly for those states looking for alternatives to National State Auditor Association peer reviews, we recommended that the NLPES website offer more information about approaches that have been used by different states. The NLPES Executive Committee intends to add such information to the website in the near future.

Some of the changes recommended by the Emerging Issues Committee have already occurred. For instance, a brief slideshow introducing people to NLPES is now on the NLPES website (See http://www.ncsl.org/programs/nlpes/about/about.htm. You may want to recommend this to new staff in your agency!) Also, the main NLPES webpage now has direct links to the NCSL Assembly on State Issues (ASI) committees. So, for example, if your agency is doing a study of e-government, you’ll be interested to know that the ASI Communications and Information Policy Committee webpage has summaries of recent NCSL sessions on various e-government topics.

The Emerging Issues Committee talked quite a bit about possible ways to improve NLPES training for member states—including CD-ROM-based training modules, regional training, and other ideas. Ultimately, however, there seemed to be a need to collect more information from member states about their preferences regarding the content and form of possible new training. Consequently, the Executive Committee will incorporate some training-related questions into the upcoming survey of member agencies.

In recent years, the American Evaluation Association has had a lot of discussion about the desirability of certifying individual program evaluators. Our Emerging Issues Committee did not see a benefit to having NLPES get into the business of certification. However, the Executive Committee intends to monitor ongoing discussions on this topic through its liaison to AEA, Rakesh Mohan of Washington State.

In summary, these are a few of the larger topics that were addressed by the Emerging Issues Committee. The effort has been a form of strategic planning for NLPES—to help the Executive Committee ensure that priority issues are being addressed. But, although the Emerging Issues Committee finished its work earlier this year, the Executive Committee always welcomes the kinds of input and suggestions that led to these recent discussions.

So keep those cards, letters, and e-mails coming to Executive Committee members if you can think of new ways that NLPES can be of greater service. With your help, the Executive Committee can be an ongoing forum for discussion of emerging issues within NLPES and within the field of legislative program evaluation.

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Office Happenings

Arizona

Melanie Chesney, an employee of the Office of the Auditor General, has been promoted from Manager to Performance Audit Division Director.

Florida

Dr. Steve Harkreader has been selected as the methodologist for OPPAGA. Dr. Harkreader began working for OPPAGA in 1998 as a legislative policy analyst.

Cyndie Cline, Michael Garner, Rashada Houston, and Julie Douthit have recently joined OPPAGA as legislative policy analysts. Tim Elwell has joined OPPAGA as a senior legislative analyst.

Julie Ferris, Steven Birnholz, and Dr. Mary Stutzman have recently left OPPAGA for other employment opportunities.

Regrettably, Brian Betters, an OPPAGA staff member, passed away after an extended illness.

Minnesota

Deborah Junod recently joined the Office of the Legislative Auditor as a Principal Program Evaluation Specialist. Adrienne Howard has also joined the Legislative Auditor’s Office as an Intermediate Program Evaluation Specialist.

Susan Von Mosch recently left the Legislative Auditor’s Office for another employment opportunity. Jenn Moenck Feige resigned her position to become a full-time mom.

Missouri

Barbara Glover, Linda Dudgeon, and Kimberly Reardon have recently joined the Oversight Division as program evaluators. Barbara was also notified that she has successfully completed the Certified Public Accountant examination.

Steve Shiery and Matt Funke have been promoted to Program Evaluator II and Ross Strope has been promoted to a Fiscal Analyst II.

Julie Miller, Robert Boone, Rich Villmer, and Kathy Frese have recently left the Oversight Division for other employment opportunities.

Tennessee

Regrettably, Colleen Brick, an employee of the Office of Research and Education Accountability, recently died in a car accident while traveling to work.

West Virginia

Gordon Bronson has recently joined the Program Evaluation and Research Division as a Research Manager.

Dr. Antonio Jones, former director of the Program Evaluation and Research Division, now conducts performance reviews for the office of the West Virginia Governor. Tony presently is a one-person office, but there are plans to increase his staff to possibly six employees.

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Getting Along With the Auditee

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1984 issue of the LPES Report, the predecessor to the NLPES News. The article was written by Douglas West, a former manager with the Utah Legislative Auditor General’s office.

Many factors exist that can easily spoil our relationships with the auditee. At the start of most audits, we usually must deal with suspicious agency management who is absolutely convinced that the audit is politically motivated. If they are not concerned about politics, they can feel strongly that audit groups like ours do not have the expertise or skills to evaluate their programs. As the audit progresses, we will, at some point, have to defuse a potentially dangerous situation caused by a personality conflict between an audit team member and an agency manager or employee.

There is no simple formula or prescription that can be used to eliminate problems, but there are some positive steps we can take. Probably the most important is to recruit auditors with good interpersonal skills. During the interview process, we look for candidates who can relate to a broad range of individuals. We want them to be able to deal with the DOT construction worker and the university president both on the same day. These skills are not easily taught, so recruitment interviews are crucial in identifying auditors who have them.

Even the most competent auditors are going to have problems with the auditee sometime during an audit. To promote cooperation, the auditors must be willing to share information. In our office, we encourage the audit team leader to meet regularly with agency management. They are told to discuss all findings with agency staff and not put off giving them negative or critical information until the end of an audit. Our goal is no surprises at the exit conference. A successful technique we have used for years is a pre-exit meeting. This meeting gives agency management a chance to review the report informally with the audit team before involving the Auditor General.

The process of regularly sharing information with the auditee produces some positive benefits that makes a difficult job somewhat easier. Information is much easier to obtain when the auditor is trusted and has credibility with the auditee. Credibility with the auditee gives the auditor a better chance of seeing his or her recommendations implemented. Sharing information ultimately can create an audit environment free of conflict where the auditor and auditee work cooperatively to improve program operations.

Whatever action we take, there will always be problems, because audits and auditors are never going to be popular with most agency managers. Our experience over the years, however, indicates that we improve our chance for positive program changes when we cooperate rather than fight with agency management.

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Calendar of Events

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