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 certain activities of the State Ethics Commission (SEC) for the period July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2019.
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.
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Objective |
Conclusion |
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Yes |
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Yes |
To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of SEC’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 SEC’s staff and management.
Additionally, we performed the procedures described below.
Acknowledgment Receipt for Conflict of Interest Law Summary
We obtained SEC’s list of all 688 elected state and county employees who were subject to the requirements of Section 27 of Chapter 268A of the General Laws during the audit period. SEC manually updates this list with the received date for each employee’s annual acknowledgment receipt for the Conflict of Interest Law summary. We examined 100% of the list for evidence of each employee’s annual acknowledgment receipt. We obtained the acknowledgment receipts and noted each one’s document type (Portable Document Format file or email reply), date, and sender email address. We assessed the timeliness of acknowledgment receipts by calculating the difference between the due date and receipt date, noting the number and percentage of respondents who did not respond within 30 days as required.
The instances of noncompliance that were identified in this area were deemed insignificant by the audit team and were discussed with SEC management. SEC officials stated that they would be implementing process improvements to ensure that all acknowledgment receipts were submitted in a timely manner.
Certification of Online Training Program Completion
We obtained SEC’s list of all 358 elected state and county employees who were subject to the requirements of Section 28 of Chapter 268A of the General Laws during the audit period. SEC manually updates this list with the received date for each employee’s certification of online training program completion. We examined 100% of the list for evidence of online training completion. We obtained the certifications and noted the completion date on each one to determine whether there were any respondents who did not meet the due date.
Data Reliability
To determine the reliability of SEC’s lists of elected state and county employees, we interviewed the management personnel who were responsible for the source data and used electronic spreadsheet functionality to identify hidden cells and rows or other irregularities. We noted no exceptions. To determine the completeness of the SEC lists, we compared the names and positions on the lists to the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s (SOC’s) Public Document 43, which lists the results of state and county elections certified by SOC and maintained on its website. We determined that the SEC lists of elected state and county employees were sufficiently reliable for the purpose of this audit.
| Date published: | May 22, 2020 |
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