Association of Local Government Auditors

Knighton Award History

In 1994, Kathryn Nichols, an auditor in the Multnomah County Auditor's Office in Portland, Oregon suggested that ALGA sponsor an annual award for "best audit."  She and Gary Blackmer, Multnomah County Auditor, proposed that a panel of judges evaluate audits for most innovative practices, best writing, most challenging audit findings and other criteria.  From the beginning, the award was to be named after Lennis Knighton, long considered the inventor of modern performance auditing.

Gary Blackmer announced the award in the September 1995 Quarterly.  In order to compete, audit offices had to belong to ALGA, conduct audits according to Government Auditing Standards, and meet the peer review standard.  Original judging criteria were based upon an AGA report on performance auditing and included:

• potential for significant impact, audit conclusions which are persuasive, logical, and firmly supported by the evidence, using appropriate research methods and tools;
• workable audit recommendations which will make government programs more effective and efficient;
• audit results which are communicated in a clear, concise way;
• audits that have a scope, methodology, recommendations, or report format which is innovative.

Originally, the Knighton award was given to one audit shop per year.  All audit offices, small or large, competed against one another.  From the outset, there was concern about the number of submissions being too low. In the first year, there were fourteen submissions, evenly distributed between medium and large organizations.  There were no submissions from small organizations.

For 1996, ALGA received fifteen reports.  To increase participation, the ALGA Board had added two new categories, special projects and small project audit reports open to any size office for audits of 300 hours or less.  However, there were only two awards that year, one for an audit and one for a special project.  Submissions for the small project audit did not meet criteria and the Board discontinued that award.

Submissions 2005 to 2009

Beginning in 1999, ALGA increased the Knighton award categories to three:  small (1 to 5 auditors), medium (6-15 auditors) and large (over 15 auditors).  Since the early years, submissions have increased and in the last five years, ALGA received an average of 40 reports each year.  However, submissions declined for the small shop category from 18 in 2005 to 7 in 2009.  The first three Knighton winners were from the medium shop category and submissions have remained the highest from this group, averaging seventeen submissions annually.

The ALGA Board has added and removed award categories in the intervening years since the inception of the Knighton award.  It discontinued the special project award after 2004 as a result of Yellow Book revisions.  In 2007, a website award program was added.  There is also a lifetime membership award given to ALGA members who are no longer in local government auditing and who have made a major contribution to the profession.

What's in the water on the West Coast?

Award Recipient States/Provinces - 1995 to 2009

Since 1995, ALGA has given sixty-five awards to thirty-three different auditing jurisdictions. Seventeen jurisdictions have received an award more than once.  It is a tribute to the repeat winners' reports that the judges rotate through the awards categories and the repeat awards are actually bestowed by different people. 

Over half of the awards went to audit shops on the west coast (Washington, Oregon, California) with Oregon having the highest number (17 awards).  The number of small shop award recipients is smaller (8) than the other two groups of recipients.

Audit Titles - Knighton Award Recipients 1995 to 2009

What does it take to win?

Many of the criteria are very similar to earlier guidelines. To be eligible to receive the Knighton Award, an audit office must:

• Be an organizational member of ALGA.
• Submit a performance audit report issued during the appropriate year.
• Take "majority responsibility" for the conduct of the performance audit.
• Conduct the audit in accordance with either Yellow Book or Red Book standards.
• Include a standards compliance statement or modified compliance statement.

Judges and their organizations are eligible, as long as they do not judge within their category. Awards Committee members and their organizations are also eligible and appropriate provisions are made to ensure an independent judging process.

A Wordle analysis of the 65 winners by audit area (see above) revealed that there seem to be commonalities.  For example, these are audits about "hard" topics such as streets, maintenance, capital, construction, pension, police and bonds. Judges in awarding the 1996 Knighton to King County, Washington noted:

• It is clearly written and the information is presented in a logical sequence.
• It is balanced. It recognizes the achievements of the Public Health Department and in a forthright manner, sets out areas that could be improved, including efficiency, effectiveness and outcomes.
• It includes nearly all the important reporting factors. It sets forth scope, methodology, and objectives. It includes a discussion of both compliance and internal controls. It presents findings which have strong background sections and generally include all the elements of a finding.

Judges' Feedback 2009

• It includes 12 meaningful recommendations that are both typical, and in some cases somewhat innovative. For example, one innovative strategy suggests use of a Geographic Information System to monitor and track emerging infectious disease rates.

At the end of the most recent award cycle, judges listed both positive and negative attributes of reports they read.  Many of these comments are in similar areas mentioned for the 1996 Knighton award recipient.  Combining both negative and positive comments in the Wordle to the right gives a visual compilation.  The top descriptive words were data, recommendations, impact, clear, dollar, innovation, efficient, value and analysis.

What it means to win

Each year at the annual ALGA conference award recipients are honored before the membership with a plaque.  Each audit shop that wins the gold Knighton presents the audit in a special session.  These sessions are among the most attended at each conference.  Submitting great audits to be recognized comes with other benefits. The Gold award recipient also receives the following if the audit shop agrees to present the winning audit report at the ALGA Annual Conference:

• Airfare.
• Hotel accommodations.
• One Conference registration.

Watch the ALGA quarterly, special emails and the website for information about the next award cycle. Review the audits you will have completed by end of December 2010 and think about an audit you would like to submit.  The awards process usually opens for submissions with a due date in early January.

Suzanne Flynn, Metro Auditor, Portland, Oregon

(Editor's Note: In our hard copy version of the Quarterly, we mistakenly identified Suzanne Flynn as the Awards Committee Chair. The current Awards Committee Chair is Pam Weipert of Oakland County, MI. We apologize for the error.)