Conference Topics: Improving the Quality of Local Government Auditing: Peer Review, Selecting Audit Topics: Doing The Right Things, Developing Systems to Manage Your Audit Function, Auditing Public Safety Organizations: New Approaches and Innovations, Are We Independent? The Local Auditor Challenge

Deb’s Memories: Being in Peter Babachicos’ city, Jerry Silva negotiating a group rate for the trolley tour, Boston Commons, and of course the fire alarm in the middle of the night.

Conference Topics: Quality Control: Update on Peer Review, Auditing Employee Benefits & Insurance Programs, Auditing Construction Contracts & Projects, Auditing Public Assistance & Social Programs, Auditing Parks and Recreation Activities, Local Government Fraud Auditing, Reporting on Government Performance, Managing Your Audit Function, Evaluating Audit Effectiveness

Deb’s Memories: Dick and Gary’s turn to host. Being in my birth city, the Marriott on the waterfront, the river walk, being with auditor friends in a city I love.

Conference Topics: Breaking New Ground: Innovative Local Government Audits, Service Efforts and Accomplishments, Construction Auditing, Costing Government Services,

Performance Auditing: Getting Started, Preparing for a Peer Review, How Can We Develop Effective Media and Press Relations?, How Can We Develop Good Working Relationships with Elected Officials?, How Can We Effectively Motivate, Reward and Lead Audit Staff?, How to Get Action on Audit Recommendations, Managing Your Audit Function: What Works, Auditing and Ethics

Deb’s Memories: Probably where Joanne (White) Griggs and I started our professional and personal friendship, the reception event where we rode the bus to a place in the Rockies and had a cowboy BBQ. (Or was this Scottsdale?)

Conference Topics: Program Effectiveness and Privatization, Auditing Telecommunications Franchises and Taxes, Dealing with Law Enforcement in Fraud Auditing, Successful Audit Selection Strategies, Emerging Issues in Performance Auditing, Keep Your Powder Dry (and Your Resume Clean!), TQM and the Audit Function: What’s it All Mean to Us?, The Auditor’s Role in Helping the Jurisdiction Cope with Fiscal Crises, Proposed Yellow Book Revisions, Auditing Public Works Operations, Using Surveys in Auditing Program Effectiveness, Writing Successful Audit Programs, Following Through: The Role of the Auditor and the Audit Committee After the Report is Issued, Auditing Public Safety Agencies, Using Report Design to Increase Audit Impact, Responses to GASB’s Preliminary Views Document on Service Efforts and Accomplishments, Managing Your Audit Function: What Are You Learning Now?, The Activist Auditor and the New Public Administration.

Deb’s Memories: Jerry Silva and Doug Norman (Mr. Peer Review Committee Chair for many years), must have been doing the Saturday night stay to get the airfare deal, so the three of us did Epcot together and once again Silva used his charm to get us a table at the Mexican restaurant when it was booked solid.

Conference Topics: Redesigning the Audit Function: Meeting User Needs, Reporting on Results: Auditor’s Role in Performance Measurement, Watchdogs or Consultants: Identifying the Audit Customer, What is Your Vision for the Future of NALGA?, Pushing the Envelope: New Styles in Local Government Auditing, Using Technology to Redesign the Audit Process, Changing the Organization: Experiences in the Washington Sate Auditor’s Office, Improving the Audit Process: Learning from Our Mistakes, Benchmarking the Internal Audit Function, How Its Done: Blueprint for a Performance Audit, Managing for Results: City and State Management in the 90’s

Deb’s Memories: The wonderful plaza area of the hotel, the delightful warm weather, many auditor friends sitting around the pool sharing audit tales. The fun we all had at Pinnacle Peak.

Conference Topics: Effectiveness Reporting and Auditing: A Framework for Supporting Responsible and Responsive Governance and Accountability in the Public Sector, Media Relations, Update: New Yellow Book, Auditors as Change Agents: The New Responsibilities of the Performance Auditor, Peer Review under New GAO Standards, Internet Resources for Auditors, Why Do Managers Resist Benchmarking?, Management Reports On Control, Creating Competition for Public Service Delivery – What is the Role of the Auditors?, Contract Audit Opportunities, Leveraging Audit Resources with Citizens Task Forces, Round Tables - Innovative Audit Techniques, European Perspectives on Local Government Auditing

Deb’s Memories: All of Joanne and her staff’s hard work, they took it up a notch in a time when there was no ALGA member services staff to do the lion’s share of the conference prep work, walking the boardwalk with Peggy Gamble from Deland FL, the first night’s gathering and how we all so picked up the conversation just as it had left off a year before, and me having the "best" travel story of the conference attendees. (In D.C. I missed the last plane to Norfolk by minutes, and a mega premier flier took me under his wing and insisted that he and I both had to get to Virginia Beach that evening. The airline ended up getting us a driver and town car and we "flew" down the freeway at 85 miles an hour, but only after the driver stopped to pick up his family at the county fair. We were crammed in the car with several adults and little kids until he dropped the relatives off, but his wife and small child came with us -- something I will never forget.)

Conference Topics: Comparative Performance Measures, The Appropriate Use of Force, Using Self-Assessments to Evaluate Internal Controls, Round Tables, Auditors’ Role in Business Process Reengineering, Introducing Performance Auditing, Presentation f the Award-Winning Audit, Focus Groups in Auditing, Fraud Happens: A Primer on Lying, Cheating and Stealing, Internet Resources for Auditors

Deb’s Memories - Having dinner with a few Portland auditor friends shortly after arriving at the hotel. The controversy about whether to have the conference in Bellevue rather than Seattle because of pricing issues. Back then we were still having the conference before or after the biennial audit forum and the forum was in Seattle. Taking a ferry to an Indian village and having a salmon cookout (well maybe that event was actually connected to the forum, but close enough), More importantly Marcia Buchanan was there and it was on the ferry ride back that she told me, Deb you can pass a peer review. The standards are flexible. I took that to heart and became only the second two person audit shop to have an ALGA peer review (the first one was Brent Nelson’s eleven years earlier). My third peer review is scheduled for this June and I’m proud that I’ve helped peer reviews become common practice for small shops.

Conference Topics: Marketing the Audit Function, Getting Started with Control Self-Assessment, Auditing Performance Measures, Information Systems Audits, What Every Auditor Should Know About Fraud, Roundtable Discussion -Best Practices in Our Members’ Audit Organizations, Working with Prosecutors, Intergovernmental Cooperation, Construction Audits, Knighton Award Winning Audit, Benchmarking the Audit Function, Evaluating Privatization and Managed Competition, Health Benefit Audits, Small Group Discussions on Best Practices in A Variety of Audit Topic Areas and Topics of Interest to Audit Managers

Deb’s Memories - Costa’s city. Costa rode off into the sunset at the end of 2007. Another retirement that made me sad and come face to face with the fact that time is marching on. Every organization needs a Costa, dedicated to his profession and a bit of a politician. I think everyone who attended still remembers line dancing at Billy Bob’s with Costa.

Conference Topics: Audit Trends, Control Self Assessment, Developing a Website: Where to Begin, One CSA-to-Go, Multi-Jurisdictional Audits – to Go, Audit Impact and Accomplishment Reports-to-Go, Fire Prevention Code Audit-to-Go, Financial Indicator Reports-to-Go, Benchmarking Opportunities and Difficulties, Meeting the Quick Response Challenge, Effective Media Coverage of Audit Issues, Span of control Audit-to-Go, Managing Audit Contracts, Land Development Audit-to-Go, Electronic Workpapers, Police Reorganization Audit-to-Go, External Peer Review, Investigative Techniques for Auditing, Web pages-to-Go

Deb’s Memories: The Chicago Board meeting prior to the conference. Jerry Heer carrying our left over pizza throughout the city trying to find a homeless person to give it to. We found many homeless, but none wanted our pizza. I also think this may have been the first conference where professional outside help was hired to help organize and do administrative conference tasks.

Conference Topics: An Auditor Turned City Manager Perspective, Ethics and Public Responsibility, The Auditor’s Role, Putting Character First, Audit Tools and Fraud Detection in an Automated Environment, Fraud Case Studies, Identifying and Managing Audit Risk, Addressing Risk in the Small Audit Shop, Auditing Soft Controls Using Control Self Assessment, Roundtables: Small, Medium, and Large Shops, Practicing What You Breach: What Happens When the Auditor Becomes the CAO, The Auditor as a Champion for Government Performance Measurement, Getting Performance Measurement Started in Kansas City: The Auditors Must Be Crazy, Performance Measurement in Austin: the Never Ending Audit, Portland’s Performance

Report: The Best of the Best, Overcoming Obstacles to Comply with Auditing Standards and Pass a Peer Review, New City – New Challenges, Effective Risk Assessment for Public Private Partnerships, Partners for Public Accountability, Knighton Award Winner: Telephone Customer Service Practices and Guidelines, Special Report Award: the City Review

Deb’s Memories: The smallest town we went to for a conference and it was terrific. The street jewelers, the art museums, sculptures and town square with lots of adobe buildings. Jean Pierre Garritte, Chairman of the Board of the IIA attending our conference and speaking to the Board. The controversy surrounding the Knighton award that year. The very small tube plane with all the Oregon auditors crammed inside on the first leg of our flight home. And sadly, me telling Richard Chambers how sorry I was about Don Smuland, but he had not yet heard that Don passed away on his way home from the ALGA conference the day before. Don was a professional friend to many levels of government auditors and especially to Richard.

Conference Topics: A Perspective on Transitions From State to Local Government, Independence Preliminary Views, Auditing With Interactive Technology, Risk Assessment, Audits of Police Investigations, Computer Assisted Audit Techniques, Demand Responsive Transport Systems and ADA Compliance, How Investigations (and maybe audits) Can Go Wrong, Techniques for Conducting Construction Performance Audits, Recognizing and Documenting Fraud, Utility Tax Audits (Telecom), Law and Justice Survey, CGAP, Purchasing and Beyond, Success Beyond Traditional Auditing – A Local Government’s Winning Formula, Geezer Panel, Say Whaaaat?? … Taking the Babble out of Technical Communication, Roundtables, Automated Workpapers, The

Challenges and Benefits of Peer Review, Strategic Planning, Knighton Award Presentations

Deb’s Memories: David Walker coming down a back hallway, where Rol and I were engaged in conversation, taking advantage of the opportunity and encouraging Rol to express his opinion about the new yellow book independence standard. Joe Harris escalating the award presentation to new heights with his tuxedo, beads and sparkle. Alan Ash playing his bass with the jazz band.

Conference Topics: Issues Affecting the Future of Auditing in the Public Sector, Customer Expectations of Local Government Auditors, Audit Follow-Up, Revenue Auditing: Transient Occupancy Tax, Audits-To-Go: Internet Usage, Police Crime Statistics, Working with New Top Management and Elected Officials, General Accounting Office IT Initiative, Compliance with Government Auditing Standards in a Small Audit Shop, Personal Property Auditing Round Table, Changes in Government Auditing Standards, What’s New in Electronic Data Analysis, Investigating Casino Scams, Electronic Registration Systems, Case Studies & Asset Control Issues, Teaching Management How To Be Audit Proof, Knighton Award Winners, Special Project Award Winners, Inmate Phone Audits, Audits-To-Go: Application Systems Security

Deb’s Memories: Harriet Richardson boarding the Reno to Tahoe shuttle at the last second and having a great conversation about families and auditing on the 45 minute ride.

Conference Topics: Growing Financial Imbalance (by David Walker), Recent Developments in Peer Review, Audit Round Tables, Yellow Book Update (Marcia Buchanan), Management and Performance Reviews of School Districts, Auditor Roles in Government Performance Measurement, Fraud Prevention: A Risk Management Guide to Preventing Crime, Are You Running With the Giraffes?, Ethics and Governance (Cynthia Cooper), Ethics Panel, Integrating the Internet Into the Audit Process, Audit-to-Go – Flexible Spending Accounts, Purchasing Cards, Franchise Fees, use of Geographic Information Systems in Auditing, Integrated Risk Management Initiative, Special Projects Award Winners, Knighton Award Winners, Adding Impact Through ACL: Spice Up Your Audit Techniques and Sweeten Your Results!, Why Things go Right, Why Things Go Wrong

Deb’s Memories: I took the CGAP exam, my first exam in eons and I was terrified. I felt like a zombie afterwards, but I do think it was the Richmond conference where the peer review video was filmed. Just last week I had an email from a two-person audit shop who had seen the video and wanted advice about peer review. I had forgotten about the interview, but will never forget Cynthia Cooper’s amazing WorldCom story and how she made each of us feel proud to be in her company. Also great having Marcia Buchanan return to our conference, and David Walker on the agenda as well.