Audit of the Division of Standards Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Division of Standards

Overiew

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 certain activities of the Division of Standards (DOS) for the period July 1, 2016 through June 30, 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 objective.

Below is our audit objective, the conclusion we reached regarding our objective, and where the objective is discussed in the audit findings.

Objective	Conclusion
Does DOS properly administer its commercial weights and measures program for towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants?	No; see Findings 1 and 2

 

To achieve our audit objective, we gained an understanding of DOS’s internal control environment in relation to our audit objective by asking management about any internal control policies and procedures that DOS had in place during the audit period and by reviewing the most recent internal control plan. In addition, we performed the following procedures.

• We requested a list of complaints submitted to DOS during the audit period. We determined whether DOS had resolved all 19 complaints that originated from towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants by determining whether complaint reports had been completed and filed, whether the electronic complaint log accurately reflected the information from the corresponding complaint reports, whether there were inspection reports for complaints that were reported as resolved, and how many days elapsed from the date a complaint was filed to the date it was reported as resolved.
• We reviewed DOS records to confirm that all 11 DOS inspectors who worked during the audit period were certified inspectors of weights and measures as required by Section 6 of Title 202 of the Code of Massachusetts Regulations (CMR).
• We reviewed DOS records to confirm that during the audit period, all 11 DOS inspectors completed the continuing education necessary to maintain their certifications as inspectors of weights and measures as required by 202 CMR 6.
• We counted the numbers of inspected weighing and measuring devices listed on the inspection reports on file at DOS for towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants for 2016 and 2017. There were 1,170 inspected devices listed on the reports for 2016 and 1,383 on the reports for 2017. We also counted the number of inspected devices listed on the inspection reports for the period January 1, 2018 through June 30, 2018, which totaled 560. From this information, we determined that 42 of the 106 towns in Massachusetts with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants did not have inspection reports on file at DOS.
• We selected a sample of 120 weighing and measuring devices (e.g., gasoline pumps, deli scales, propane scales) from the 3,113 devices inspected during the audit period in the 64 towns that had inspection reports on file. The overall sample was judgmental. We selected 30 devices inspected in 2016, 60 devices inspected in 2017, and 30 devices inspected in 2018 and traveled to the businesses where the devices were located to determine whether they were still in service and had inspection stickers indicating when they were last inspected. We also checked whether the devices had been inspected during the previous calendar year. We were unable to examine 15 of the devices from our sample because they were not present.
• Of the 42 towns that had no inspection reports on file, we selected the 10 most populous to determine whether there were any businesses there using scales or other weighing and measuring devices. Using Google Maps, we identified 16 businesses that could be using scales or other weighing and measuring devices in these 10 towns. We called 6 of the businesses and visited the other 10.
• We randomly visited 21 businesses in towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants to determine whether they had any weighing and measuring devices that required inspection. If there was a weighing and measuring device on site, we determined whether it had an inspection sticker and whether the inspection had been performed during the previous calendar year.

Where sampling was used, we used nonstatistical sampling and therefore could not project the results of our testing to the overall populations.

To determine the reliability of the weighing and measuring device inspection information we received from DOS, we first compared the list of Massachusetts towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants that DOS gave us to a list of Massachusetts towns with 5,000 or fewer inhabitants that the United States Census Bureau published, based on a 2010 census, and assessed the accuracy of DOS’s list. We then compared the information on DOS’s list to its inspection files to determine whether there was inspection information for each of the listed communities.

To determine the reliability of the information about complaints submitted to DOS, we traced all the complaints that DOS’s staff had recorded on a spreadsheet during our audit period to the physical files of complaints DOS maintained. We did this to ensure that all complaints recorded as received had corresponding physical files. We also checked the DOS complaint spreadsheet for missing or possibly invalid values.

Date published:	January 31, 2019