Audit of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.

Overview

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) for the period July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018. For our review of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Program case plans, we revised our scope to include case plans for inmates released from FCSO from January 1, 2018 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; the conclusion we reached regarding each objective; and, if applicable, where each objective is discussed in the audit findings.

Objective	Conclusion
Were the non-payroll expenses that FCSO incurred supported and directly applicable to the office’s mission?	Yes
Did FCSO administer its contracting process for goods and services in accordance with its policies?	No; see Finding 1
Did FCSO ensure that overtime was reconciled to overtime authorization forms?	No; see Finding 2
Did FCSO document case plans for sentenced inmates in the MAT Program upon release?	Yes

 

To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of the internal controls we determined to be relevant to our audit objectives by reviewing applicable laws, regulations, and agency policies and procedures, as well as conducting inquiries with FCSO’s staff and management. We evaluated the design and effectiveness of controls over non-payroll expenses, contracting, and staff overtime and determined whether they operated as intended during the audit period.

Additionally, we performed the procedures described below.

Non-Payroll Expenses

We obtained FCSO state appropriation expenditure data from the Massachusetts Management Accounting and Reporting System (MMARS) and selected a nonstatistical judgmental sample of 45 non-payroll transactions (totaling $429,308) from a population of 3,953 transactions (totaling $7,755,743) that FCSO made during our audit period. We requested supporting documentation, such as invoices and purchase orders, and analyzed it to determine whether the expenditures were supported and directly applicable to FCSO’s mission.

Contracting Process

We obtained FCSO state appropriation expenditure data from MMARS and summarized it by fiscal year and by vendor for our audit period. We selected a nonstatistical judgmental sample of 25 vendors (with payments totaling $1,575,719) from a population of 111 vendors (with payments totaling $5,194,609). These 25 vendors all received payments of at least $10,000 (the amount specified in FCSO policies as requiring a contract) within a fiscal year covered by our audit period. We reviewed the procurement files for these vendors to assess whether goods and services were procured in accordance with FCSO’s policies.

Overtime

We obtained records from MMARS of all overtime paid from FCSO’s state appropriation for overtime worked during the audit period. We used a stratified sampling method to select a sample of 82 overtime payments (totaling $50,073) from a population of 2,302 (totaling $792,263). We identified the five employees who were paid the most for overtime during the audit period (representing 218 overtime payments, totaling $205,483) and judgmentally selected 7 overtime payments for each employee (35 payments, totaling $37,612). We also selected a nonstatistical random sample of 47 overtime payments (totaling $12,461) from the population of 2,084 overtime payments for the remaining employees (totaling $586,780). We reviewed timesheets for each pay period selected, as well as the corresponding overtime authorization forms (which FCSO management uses to document the need for the overtime and approve overtime hours), to determine whether the sample of overtime payments reconciled to the amounts of overtime documented and authorized.

MAT Program

We obtained MAT Program participation data from FCSO’s staff and selected a nonstatistical judgmental sample of 10 sentenced inmates who were released in calendar year 2018 from a population of 49 inmates. We reviewed inmate files to determine whether FCSO documented case plans for inmates upon release that included counseling and healthcare information.

Data Reliability

In 2018, OSA performed a data reliability assessment of MMARS, focused on testing selected system controls (access controls, application controls, configuration management, contingency planning, and segregation of duties) for the period April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018. In addition, as part of our current audit we tested controls in place over FCSO’s security awareness training and personnel security. Further, we selected a random sample of 30 invoices from FCSO’s files and determined whether the information on the invoices matched the data in MMARS. We also selected 30 transactions from MMARS and traced the information to physical documentation (invoices). We determined that the information from MMARS for our audit period was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit work.

We determined the reliability of data obtained from the state’s Self-Service Time and Attendance (SSTA) system by performing interviews and observations and testing certain information technology controls over security management, segregation of duties, and access controls. We also traced a sample of SSTA data to original source documents and MMARS data, and we traced data from source documents and MMARS to SSTA data. We determined that the data from SSTA were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this audit.

We used a Microsoft Excel tracking log spreadsheet provided by FCSO to identify the population of MAT Program participants released from custody. We analyzed the spreadsheet by testing for hidden data, columns, worksheets, formulas, duplicates, and active filters. We traced a judgmental sample of 10 program participant case files to data in the spreadsheet. Additionally, we judgmentally selected 10 case files to determine whether the spreadsheet properly listed MAT Program participants. We determined that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report.

Whenever sampling was used, we applied a nonstatistical approach, and as a result, we were not able to project our results to the entire population.

Date published:	September 26, 2019