Audit of the Office for Refugees and Immigrants Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

An overview of the purpose and process of auditing the Office for Refugees and Immigrants.

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 Office for Refugees and Immigrants (ORI) for the period July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018. The list of refugees obtained is based on the federal fiscal year, which is October 1 through September 30. Our list of expenses is based on the state fiscal year, which is July 1 through June 30.

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 our audit objective, indicating the question we intended our audit to answer and the conclusion we reached regarding the objective.

Objective	Conclusion
Does ORI properly administer program services for refugees and immigrants in accordance with Section 207(a) of Chapter 6 of the General Laws?	Yes

 

We gained an understanding of internal controls over ORI’s administration of its integration process that we deemed significant to our audit objective by interviewing ORI management and reviewing ORI policies and procedures.

We performed the following audit procedures to obtain sufficient audit evidence to address our audit objective:

• For expenses that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Public Health (DPH) charged to ORI’s interagency service agreement (ISA) account during the audit period, we selected a statistical sample of 100 expenses, totaling $2,675,422, from a population of 1,020 expenses, totaling $20,199,957. We then compared payroll documents and invoices to determine whether the charges were for the services specified in the ISA. Because we found no errors in our test, we are 95% confident that the populations contain no more than a 5% error rate.⁵
• To determine whether non-ISA expenses incurred during the audit period were properly supported and authorized, we selected a statistical sample of 120 expenses, totaling $82,987, from a population of 26,673 expenses, totaling $16,276,902. We reviewed payroll documents, invoices, and summary expense reports. Because we found no errors in our test, we are 95% confident that the populations contain no more than a 5% error rate.
• To determine eligibility to receive ORI benefits, we selected a statistical sample of 100 refugees from a population of 4,466 refugees who received benefits during federal fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and we reviewed US Citizenship and Immigration Services documents (Form I-94 or a visa) disclosing their immigration status. Because we found no errors in our test, we are 95% confident that the populations contain no more than a 5% error rate.
• The ISAs with DCF and DPH required that financial and programmatic reports be submitted to ORI. We reviewed all 22 financial and 8 programmatic reports that were submitted to ORI during our audit period to show evidence of ORI monitoring.
• ORI conducted 47 site visits to its contractors during our audit period to ensure that various refugee programs were properly conducted in accordance with contract requirements. These reviews included case file reviews, staff interviews, observations of operations, and other procedures deemed necessary under the circumstances. We reviewed all of these reports to verify ORI’s monitoring activities.

Data Reliability

We obtained appropriation and expenditure data from the Massachusetts Management Accounting and Reporting System (MMARS). In 2018, OSA performed a data reliability assessment of MMARS that focused on testing selected system controls (i.e., access controls, application controls, configuration management, contingency planning, and segregation of duties) for the period April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018. OSA performed a similar assessment in 2014. Further, as part of our current audit, we selected random samples of expenses from MMARS from ORI, DPH, and DCF accounts related to refugee programs. We traced these expenses to the invoices from ORI, DCF, and DPH to determine whether the information on the invoices matched the data in MMARS.

We obtained a list of refugees for federal fiscal years 2017 and 2018 from ORI management. To verify the accuracy of the refugee immigration status of a sample of refugees, we tested the list for duplicates and observed ORI personnel as they accessed the US Customs and Border Protection website.

We obtained the Community Partners Directory posted on ORI’s website to compute the number of contractors to test monitoring activities.

Based on the work performed, we determined that the information obtained for our audit period was sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit work.

5.    The expected error rate is the anticipated rate of occurrence of the error of improper billing for expenses to ORI’s ISA.

Date published:	December 12, 2019