Audit of the Civil Service Commission Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Civil Service Commission

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) for the period January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2018.

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Below is a list of our audit objectives, indicating each question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding each objective.

Objective	Conclusion
Did CSC have case flow management time standards1 for all types of appeals?	Yes
Did CSC meet the time standards it had established for the processing of appeals?	Yes

 

To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of CSC’s internal control environment related to our audit objectives by reviewing applicable laws, regulations, and agency policies and procedures, as well as conducting inquiries with CSC’s staff and management.

Additionally, we performed the procedures described below.

• We obtained case data for all appeal types and their related case event activity by date for 100% of the 594 appeals that were either opened or closed during our audit period, or still pending as of December 31, 2018, directly from CSC’s Time Matters Case Management System and performed the following procedures:
  
  - We reviewed the life cycle time standards established for each type of appeal, as noted in the “Learn about the Civil Service Commission Appeals Process” section of the CSC website and the “Case Management” section of CSC’s Internal Procedures document, and calculated the time standards for the appeal cases.
  
  - Using the life cycle time standards established for each type of appeal, we calculated the number and percentage of appeal cases that met or exceeded established phase and case life cycle time standards.

To determine the reliability of the information obtained from CSC’s Time Matters Case Management System, we conducted information security testing by using questionnaires, conducting interviews, reviewing supporting documentation, and performing observations. Additionally, we performed validity and integrity tests of the data, which included (1) testing for missing data elements (e.g., case creation date), (2) scanning for duplicate records, (3) tracing a sample of cases to published decisions on the CSC website, and (4) comparing summarized case data to case opening and closing statistics in CSC’s annual report of case statistics. We determined that the information was sufficiently reliable for audit testing.

1.    Case flow management time standards represent the expected time from the opening to the closing of a case (i.e., case life cycle) or the expected time for segments or portions of the case life cycle.

Date published:	November 8, 2019