|
A Texas-sized thank you to our incoming president Beth Breier and everyone who volunteered to help make our 22nd annual conference in San Antonio such a success.
Members who were able to attend the conference had great opportunities to develop leadership strategies, learn innovative project management techniques, and hear nuts-and-bolts tips on preventing fraud, assessing fleet efficiency, auditing IT and construction projects, and much more. We also had the chance to network with our peers and have fun. It's nice to be able to put faces to the names that we see on the ListServ.
Thank you also to all of the members who volunteered their time to chair and work on committees throughout the year. Our goal was to continue to align committee tasks and reporting with our updated strategic plan to ensure that we're offering high quality services at a reasonable cost. The committees have done a great job and you can read about their activities in the Quarterly and on the website. I'd like to highlight the work of a few of the committees whose chairs have completed their terms or are stepping down for other reasons:
- The Advocacy Committee, chaired by Jeff Griffiths, was very busy promoting local government auditing in Canada as changes in legislation authorized more municipalities to establish independent audit functions. Advocacy also worked on behalf of local government audit organizations in the US that were facing debilitating budget or staffing cuts.
- The Awards Committee, chaired by Bill Cook, continued to expand the pool of judges and continually seek new perspectives while mitigating the potential for conflicts of interest in reviewing audits submitted for the Knighton Awards and Website Awards.
- The Communication Committee, chaired by Kymber Waltmunson, continued to solicit interesting content for the Local Government Auditing Quarterly, focusing on areas that members have identified as needs and has added features such as the AudiTechie column and Fighting Fraud. The committee is also updating the website to improve usability based on member feedback.
- The Education Committee, chaired by Stan Wilmer, has continued to develop high-quality, low-cost continuing education programs for the auditing profession. Over the past year, the committee has coordinated with Portland State University and invested in technology to produce web-based video training, while continuing to conduct regional trainings, teleconferences, and Quarterly Quizzers.
- The Peer Review Committee, chaired by Mike Taylor, conducted 25 peer reviews over the past year and has continued to provide training to expand the pool of potential leaders and reviewers. Almost 150 local government audit organizations have participated in the peer review program, either providing reviewers or undergoing reviews, or both. And 12 organizations are preparing for their first review in the summer and fall of 2010.
Finally, thanks to Jay Poole who is serving as local government liaison with representatives of the GAO, federal Inspectors General and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board regarding oversight of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spending. Thanks to Jay's efforts, we're building a repository of information on audit criteria, audit approaches and audit results at the local level. You can read more about local government auditing of recovery act spending in this issue of the Quarterly.
Thanks for a fun year as your president. I enjoyed working with all of you.
Amanda Noble, ALGA Presidient, 2009-10 |
Quarterly