Improving report production efficiency at the federal Inspector General's Office

¶ … Improvement in a Government Agency

Introduction to the Organization and the Operation Process

A family member of mine works as an auditor for a U.S. (federal) government agency in the office of the Inspector General for Audit Services. The main function of their office is to conduct financial audits of the various recipients (mostly state and local agencies and facilities) to determine whether any federal funds have been received or used improperly. When the Office of Audit Services determines that federal funds have been received or used outside of the applicable laws, rules, and regulations, it issues a formal Audit Report signed by the Inspector General. Under the Inspector General Act of 1978, the inspector general has the legal authority to order the return of any improperly acquired or improperly spent federal funds (Cornell LII, 2011).

The reports issued by the Office of the Inspector General for Audit serve an important government function because they enable the federal government to recover many millions of taxpayer dollars every year, amounting to billions in a few years' time, on a continual basis. Sometimes, these audits also lead to criminal prosecution by the law enforcement division of the Inspector General's Office, such as in connection with criminally fraudulent operations exploiting vulnerabilities in the federal grant application process or in many other avenues through which federal monies are procured by beneficiaries intended to be assisted through public funds (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009).

According to my source, the Office of Audit Services currently employs a highly inefficient operations process for the creation of its audit reports. As a result, they are almost always delayed and take much longer than they should to produce because they must undergo numerous revisions. Many of those delays could be avoided by changing the current operations process.

The Current Operations Process

The following flow chart illustrates the current operations process being relied upon at the Office for Audit Services of this U.S. government agency's Office of Inspector General:

Audit Teams ? Auditors Draft ? Senior Auditors ? Audit Managers ? Report Sent ?

Conduct Audits Reports

Edit Reports

Edit Reports to Writer

Writer Edits ? Audit Manager ? Writer Meets w / ? Proposed Changes ? Report Sent

Report

Reviews Edits Audit Manager

IG Review

At first glance, there are six more steps to the proposed process, increasing it from a 10-step process to a 16-step process. Similarly, whereas all of the steps in the exiting operations process are simple, there are several steps in the suggested process that consist of two components. However, the purpose of those additional steps (and components) is to save time, reduce duplicated effort, and reduce the amount of work at each step whose product is likely to be discarded in subsequent steps (George & Jones, 2008). It is anticipated that the additional steps will take a small fraction of the time that they enable the entire audit team to save in the overall report-production process.

Aside from the changes in the number and configuration of the process steps, there are several steps with multiple components or options. That reflects an important principle that is the other main change in the new operational process of report writing by the office. Specifically, in the past, late-stage review of technical audit issues or necessary changes to information generated by consultations between senior auditors and between audit managers and senior auditors sometimes produced changes to the report draft that escaped review by the writer. Therefore, the suggested changes to the operations process expressly differentiate technical audit issues from writing issues and require senior auditors and managers to be extremely cognizant of the need to seek resolution of technical audit issues from the appropriate members the audit team and to seek resolution of non-technical issues of expression from the writer.

Rationale for Suggested Changes to the Operations Process

First, instead of consulting the writer only after the audits have already been conducted and the report drafted, it has been proposed that the writer should attend the audit team's meetings when audits are assigned and explained by the audit managers. Instead of the writer only finding out what the subject and issues of the audit were when he or she first reads the draft, the writer would attend the meeting(s) outlining the scheduled audit.

Second, the auditors should all consult the writer at some point during their initial draft of individual audit sections. Ideally, the auditors should present the first draft or just a full outline of the section to be drafted to the audit manager for confirmation that the substantive information and the structure of arguments are appropriate. Once the first draft of that section is completed by the auditor, the writer should be consulted for initial editing or comments. At that point, the writer would be able to consider every first section draft and to compare it to his or her notes from the audit team meeting about the audit purpose and process.

This change is preferable to the current process because the (current) initial review by the Senior Auditor always introduces substantial changes to the organization of the draft section and to the way the ideas are expressed. Invariably, many of the changes introduced by the Senior Auditor are subsequently changed again by the Audit Manager. Typically, the Writer/Editor then performs a considerable amount of editing and rewriting of every section in the report. That system is tremendously wasteful because most of the editing introduced at earlier stages before the writer's first review is redundant and, as often as not, insufficient. Provided only that every review step allows for technical auditing issues to be addressed with the auditors and writing issues addressed with the writer, this process should greatly improve the efficiency and speed with which the initial draft report sections develop.

Third, the draft section of the report should be signed off by the writer before forwarding to the senior auditor. The senior auditor should review all of the individual report sections, then provide comments on auditing issues to the auditors and consult the writer for issues having to do with expressing the information correctly. Fourth, only then should the draft report consisting of all of the sections be furnished to the audit manager for a thorough and comprehensive review. Potential auditing issues raised during the manager's review should be addressed with the senior auditor and, if necessary, the audit team; potential language and other communication issues should be addressed with the writer.

Currently, auditors must labor over the writing of each section as though it must read perfectly when they submit it for the review by the senior auditors. Many of them have expressed frustration at the fact that they are not good writers. Consequently, they waste considerable amounts of time doing what they are worst at. Meanwhile, the senior auditors have similar problems synthesizing all of the individual sections together to compile a single report draft from the work provided by the auditors. Generally, the most laborious part of that chore for senior auditors is making the necessary changes to each of the individual sections first.

By contrast, the proposed changes to the audit report production process is designed to allow the senior auditors to reconcile any technical audit issues with the individual auditors while largely ignoring the writing of those sections. The senior auditor's primary responsibility is simply to confirm that the technical audit information is correct and that it is presented in a manner that fulfills the audit plan. The senior auditors now send the writer the individual sections combined into the structural form of a complete draft report but without any significant changes to the writing.

Under the proposed changes, the writer will have already attended the audit team meetings and will have an understanding of the audit plan by the time he or she ever sees the first report draft. In essence, the writer will already know the story of the audit and is just waiting for factual information, analyses, and conclusions from the audit team. Currently, the audit team (at various levels) must author the story together with providing the factual information because the writer only learns the story of the audit by reading the first draft of the report after the individual sections have been written by auditors, edited and rewritten by senior auditors, and edited and rewritten again by audit managers.

Conclusion

In order for the new proposed audit report production process to work, auditors would have to be instructed to provide the writer with individual sections consisting of bullet points or full-sentence outlines instead of spending the necessary time to actually draft each section as though it were a portion of the finished audit report. If necessary, the writer would confirm information or intended presentation structure, but it is more likely that the writer will be able to collaborate with the senior auditor and the audit manager to refine the report more efficiently than is currently possible.

In general, the most important advantage of the proposed change to the audit report production process is that it tremendously reduces the amount of time currently wasted by auditors, senior auditors, and audit managers on writing. It eliminates most of the redundant duplication of effort between the various levels of review and it allows auditors to focus more on audit issues. Ultimately, it would increase the audit report production speed, allow the Inspector General for Audit to complete more audits every year, and recover more federal money every fiscal year than the current process allows.