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NLPES Conference Notes

New Technology Tools
Friday, September 7, 2001

Speaker: Scott Frank, Auditor, Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit

Mr. Frank described the use of ACL (Audit Control Language), software and its application to data research.  His informative presentation was drawn from actual audits  the Kansas office of Legislative Post Audit had conducted.  His first example showed how information was imported from the National Center for Education Statistics web site and then sorted and viewed using the ACL program.  Mr. Frank showed how ACL was able to calculate various spending categories on a per student basis and filter the large body of NCES data to specific parameters.  He indicated that the distinct advantages of ACL is that it simply views information without actually touching or interfacing with the original data.  Another advantage is ACL’s ability to view extremely large data sets in a relatively quick time frame.  Another example was show how ACL was used to summarize data from the State of Kansas’s billing system to identify certain payments made for health care.  Mr. Frank gave a creative illustration using a dollar bill, on how to select a data sampling starting point, and then applying ACL to select and compare data sets.
A third example showed how ACL was used to find intersections between large data sets, one of which contained over 2 million records.  In this case ACL viewed payments the State had made by vendor number and compared them to social security numbers of State employees.  Mr. Frank provided numerous knowledgeable insights to applications ACL is able to perform.  He creatively stated four distinct characteristics to ACL; fast working, able to work through huge amounts of data, safe, and very robust in that it can accept data in almost any format.
 

Speaker:  Marilynn Kesslar, Senior Product Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Ms. Kesslar’s presentation gave an overview of ‘TeamMate 2000', which is the largest supplier of auditing software to the government sector.  The software is a complete electronic auditing system complete with a variety of templates and managerial control options.  The TeamMate software was stated to be easy to learn and implement.  Ms. Kesslar talked about numerous product features such as: advanced imaging component for incorporating scanned images and digital pictures into audit works, allows work papers to be made from scratch or using templates and the capability of work papers to be prepared and added by the auditee, automatically generates audit reports in an office’s preferred format, and allows access to the audit from remote locations using the internet.  The product can manage a variety of auditing functions such as compliance, risk reviews, performance, financial, and other types of audits.  Ms. Kesslar provided on site product pricing and configuration types.