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 Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) for the period October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2021.
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 |
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Yes |
To achieve our objectives, we gained an understanding of the internal controls we determined to be relevant to the objectives by reviewing SJC policies and procedures, as well as conducting inquires with staff members and management. We evaluated the design and implementation of the internal controls related to the approval of State CIP grant applications and qualified grant expenditures.
We performed the following procedures to obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence to address the objectives.
To determine whether SJC established a five-year strategic plan in accordance with the “Program Instruction” guidance, we obtained all two of the five-year strategic plans submitted during the audit period. For each five-year strategic plan submitted to the Children’s Bureau, we inspected the plan to confirm that it:
- was formatted according to the Strategic Plan Template established by the Children’s Bureau in the “Program Instruction” guidance;
- detailed SJC’s desired outcomes, the projects and activities planned to achieve those outcomes, and plans for project or activity evaluation;
- reflected the results of the self-assessment and continuous quality improvement efforts, where applicable; and
- was submitted to the Children’s Bureau for approval.
We inspected the “Program Instruction” guidance and continuous quality improvement efforts documented within SJC’s self-assessment. We also confirmed with the Children’s Bureau that SJC submitted both of these plans to its program manager.
To determine whether SJC established a task force in accordance with the “Program Instruction” guidance, we obtained the completed grant application documents, which included a list of planned statewide multidisciplinary taskforce members. We also obtained all meeting attendance records and agendas from the 13 meetings that occurred during the audit period. We created a list of all 14 taskforce members by recording the names, job titles, and agencies of members who served on the taskforce during the audit period. We compared the makeup of the taskforce to requirements in the “Program Instruction” guidance. Additionally, we compared the number of meetings held to the number of meetings required to be held during the audit period.
To determine whether SJC adhered to the “Cost Sharing Requirement” of Section I of the “Program Instruction” guidance, we obtained all two of the Annual CIP Grant Matching Worksheets for the Basic Grant and (1) verified the annual salary amounts, (2) recalculated the annual financial contributions, and (3) recalculated the federal cost-sharing requirement.
Data Reliability Assessment
We assessed the reliability of the data obtained from SJC, which it used to calculate the state’s annual financial contribution to the Massachusetts Court Improvement Program by conducting interviews with agency officials knowledgeable about the data and testing the data for duplicate records. We traced all 28 instances of portions of salary expenses by name, job title, court or agency, and annual salary to the Office of the Comptroller of the Commonwealth’s CTHRU website, which lists the names, job titles, agencies, and annual salaries for all Commonwealth employees.
Based on the results of the data reliability procedures above, we determined that the data were sufficiently reliable for the purpose of our audit.
Conclusion
Our audit revealed no significant instances of noncompliance that must be reported under generally accepted government auditing standards.
| Date published: | June 2, 2023 |
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