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Improvements made but capital project data issues persist

Improvements made but capital project data issues persist

April 28, 2015

New Read the latest follow-up report

Performance, Strategy and Budget has a new plan for satisfying requirements for recording capital budget information. Data quality issues persist despite efforts to establish policies and tools meant to increase the reliability, usefulness, and accessibility of the capital project information provided in countywide systems. Additional work is necessary to address these issues and promote consistent and accurate reporting of capital project data by county agencies.

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The Auditor has followed up on the report to evaluate implementation of our recommendations. See the most updated information below.

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Of the 8 recommendations:
DONE  5 Recommendations have been fully implemented. Auditor will no longer monitor.
PROGRESS  0 Recommendations are in progress or partially implemented. Auditor will continue to monitor.
OPEN  0 Recommendations remain unresolved. Auditor will continue to monitor.
CLOSED  3 Recommendation is no longer applicable. Auditor will no longer monitor.

Summary

The Auditor’s Office has been conducting oversight on executive branch efforts to improve the reliability, usefulness, and accessibility of capital project data in countywide systems. This is a significant issue for the County since having access to reliable information is necessary for conducting legislative oversight and making informed decisions on capital spending. This is our third report on this topic.

The executive branch has a plan to address shortcomings in capital project budget information by modifying the Capital Project Information Center using funding approved in 2014. This report highlights progress on policies, systems, and reporting tools intended to improve capital project data. The issues below continue to need addressing:

  • Agencies are using different approaches to record budgets of related projects, reducing transparency and accountability.
  • Project teams are not consistently recording project budgets and expenditures by capital phase in the Oracle finance system (EBS), reducing the usefulness of the data for evaluating performance and preparing future project cost estimates.
  • The finance and payroll systems allow users to charge expenditures to any project, increasing the risk of errors. The Finance and Business Operation Division has not provided guidelines and tools to help agencies identify project mischarges.
  • Discrepancies remain in historical project cost and budget data transferred to EBS from legacy finance systems.

We make recommendations focused on resolving the weaknesses noted above and moving the County toward a reliable system for managing capital budget data.

Reports related to this project

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December 21, 2017
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March 10, 2017
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Click on the image(s) below to view the follow-up reports.

September 13, 2013
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January 23, 2013
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Currently, there are no related reports to this audit.

 

Audit team

Tom Wood and Tina Rogers conducted this audit. If you have any questions or would like more information, please call the King County Auditor's Office at 206-477-1033 or contact us by email KCAO@kingcounty.gov.

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