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Friends, peers, standards compliant audit professionals. Those characterize the relationships that have grown from the fortuitous meeting and collaboration of ALGA and CASA. As Joanne Griggs aptly put it in her article Partnering a Peer Review Program, “CASA members were concerned about their inability to comply with the Yellow Book’s quality control review standard.”
Friends, peers, standards compliant audit professionals. Those characterize the relationships that have grown from the fortuitous meeting and collaboration of ALGA and CASA. As Joanne Griggs aptly put it in her article Partnering a Peer Review Program, “CASA members were concerned about their inability to comply with the Yellow Book’s quality control review standard.”
At this point, a little background on CASA might be in order. CASA is a non-profit professional organization that has been around for 20 or so years in one incarnation or another. Its primary objective has always been to provide reasonably priced, relevant CPE to the community of auditors working for various State of California offices, departments, agencies, etc. Most of the State’s 150+ organizational entities have some audit staff; the need for such an organization should be quite apparent, and CASA has worked quite effectively as a training provider. The CASA Board is all volunteer, and while it has expressed interest in expanding its program to include other services, limited opportunities, a lack of resources, and those nagging job demands have prevented the Board from actively working to attain additional functions. However, over the past several years (as Joanne’s article discusses), the CASA Board decided that it could and would facilitate a peer program. The right place and time converged with the right participants, and voila, a peer program was born. We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, without the great efforts of ALGA’s Joanne Griggs, Doug Norman, and Mike Taylor, there would be no CASA peer program. So what have we done for us lately?
ALGA has provided opportunities for CASA members to act as Peer Review Team Members. To date, three CASA participants from the original Griggs/Norman training sessions have completed ALGA peer reviews, thus giving the CASA stable three potential team leaders.
With that background, and again ably lead by the City of Stockton’s Mike Taylor, the Summer of 2001 saw CASA’s first peer team engaged. Oh, what stormy seas that team faced. The department chosen for that first peer review had seen significant changes in leadership, organization, staff makeup, and mission. Moreover, the audit shop’s performance had been taken to task by the department’s federal cognizant agency. In the face of all this, the audit office and its department management were determined to get into compliance with the standards once and for all. The Peer Review would go ahead! I could make a short story long, but there’s not much to be gained in that. Suffice it to say, the first CASA peer review came out with a “Does Not Comply” opinion and about 30 items of exception for the audit office to respond to. Would other audit offices see this as “The Perfect Storm” come to life in the form of a peer program? Would CASA ever get another peer request? Well, no and yes. In fact, I’m happy to report, the requests for peer reviews have outstripped our ability to keep up. Since that first foray, a second peer review has been completed and a draft report issued, and two more reviews are planned for the 2001/02 fiscal year. CASA has formed a standing peer review committee to coordinate requests and teams, has developed protocols for maintaining files, and is developing a data base of its participants, team members, and team leaders to track the program’s progress.
CASA’s peer program has started fitfully, but is gaining momentum. We owe ALGA a great debt of gratitude for all the guidance, training, leadership, and goodwill. In the long run, I hope it makes us even better friends, peers, and standards compliant professionals.
Bon Smith is an audit manager with the California Department of Finance, Office of State Audits and Evaluations, and is president of the California Association of State Auditors. |
Peer Review