NLPES Conference Notes: Lunch with Speaker Claire McCaskill

NLPES Conference Notes

Lunch with Speakers
Speaker: Claire C. McCaskill, Missouri State Auditor
Friday, September 7, 2001

Summary:

Ms. McCaskill’s shared some of her recent exploits in the world of auditing. Her background as a former State Legislator and County Prosecutor bring a unique perspective to program evaluation. Performance auditing in relatively new to the Missouri State Auditor’s office, and Ms. McCaskill admitted that her office’s authority is a bit murky at times. For instance, she stated that her office is having difficulty doing judicial audit work.

Ms. McCaskill is in her first term as Missouri State Auditor (an elected position). When she started her term she made some drastic changes in how her office did business. Instead of spending 70% of the office time on 20% of State programs (counties, and courts primarily), she privatized some of the work, quit auditing other areas. In other words, she re-prioritized the office’s work load.

Ms. McCaskill quickly realized that audit’s have more impact if they are timely and relate to a current topic or issue. These audits are seen as more responsive, and readers are more likely to have an interest in them as the topic is on their minds. As such, she strongly believes in being flexible in planning audit work. Her office conducts quarterly audit plan meetings in which all levels of the organization participate. The purpose of these quarterly meetings is to focus the staff on where they should be looking, but again, the plans have to be flexible. Recent audits that have caused the audit plan to be shifted include:

retirement contracts
open records law
child abuse hotline
textbook procurement
early retirement plans

Recent audits that were planned and conducted according to schedule include:

nursing home inspections
medicaid reimbursement
puppy mills

Ms. McCaskill pointed out the need to do some audits that are not agency-specific. Cross-agency topics include such things as travel, cell phone usage, entertainment expenses, etc.

Finally, she pointed out the most important thing about a good audit: making sure people hear about it. She emphasized using resources to make it easy for the public to find out about/read the report. Her office uses a one-page summary called the “yellow sheet” because it’s not realistic to think that everyone is going to read the whole report.