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 the State Library of Massachusetts (SLM) for the period January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2020.
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 |
|
Yes |
To achieve our audit objective, we gained an understanding of the internal control environment related to the objective by reviewing the applicable laws and SLM policies and procedures, interviewing SLM management and other staff members, and observing various activities conducted by SLM staff members in relation to the administration of revenue. We evaluated the design and implementation of the controls over these revenue-related activities. In addition, we performed the following procedures to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to address our audit objective.
Revenue Collection
To determine whether SLM properly administered the collection, deposit, and recording of its revenue, we reconciled SLM’s bank statement information from the audit period with information in the Massachusetts Management Accounting and Reporting System (MMARS) to verify that all SLM’s revenue deposits were credited to its Expendable Trust Fund.
We selected a random, nonstatistical sample of 35 revenue transactions from the population of 109 revenue transactions that, according to MMARS and SLM records, occurred during our audit period. We referred to SLM’s fee schedules to determine whether the correct amount had been collected for each transaction. We ensured that all revenue received had been credited to SLM’s Expendable Trust Fund and posted to MMARS by SLM employees who were authorized to do so.
Data Reliability
In 2018, OSA performed a data reliability assessment of MMARS that focused on testing selected system controls (i.e., access, security awareness, audit and accountability, configuration management, identification and authentication, and personnel security) for the period April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018.
As part of our current audit, we interviewed SLM officials about the revenue process and reviewed user access to MMARS to ensure that transactions processed were executed by authorized users. We also performed the following tests related to data integrity.
- We selected a sample of 20 of the 109 revenue transactions that occurred during our audit period and traced information about the transactions to SLM bank statements and revenue receipt documents. We reconciled this information to the revenue information SLM reported in MMARS.
- We asked SLM officials to select 20 revenue transactions from the agency’s financial records and provide us with the date, revenue source, amount, reason, and payment method for each transaction. Once we got this information, we traced the revenue transactions back to MMARS and SLM’s bank statements.
We determined that the data obtained from MMARS were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our audit work.
Conclusion
Our audit revealed no significant instances of noncompliance that must be reported under generally accepted government auditing standards.
| Date published: | September 9, 2021 |
|---|