IG Shift in Audit to Evaluating Effectiveness

1. Change the emphasis of IG's from compliance auditing to evaluating
management control systems. (1)

IG's should shift their audit emphasis from ensuring compliance with
procedures to evaluating the effectiveness of line managers' own systems
of management control. By changing their emphasis, the IG's will oversee
the effectiveness of agency line management control systems to ensure
compliance with program requirements and efficient and economical
service delivery. The evaluations should:

--- assess potential management, system, and service delivery problems;

--- analyze internal management evaluations for strengths and
weaknesses;

--- identify alternative means of achieving results;

--- test management controls to reduce unnecessary spending, improve
government purchasing, recover misspent funds, and detect areas
vulnerable to fraud and abuse; and

--- identify unnecessary spending and ways to detect and prevent fraud
and abuse.

Findings and recommendations should be limited to specific items
significant in terms of a review's objectives. Oversight reviews must
aim at one objective: timely, relevant, and accurate reports serving as
valuable management tools.

Inspector General evaluations should not substitute for line managers'
own internal management program evaluations. Likewise, IG's should not
duplicate line management reviews. In agencies without line management
program evaluation capabilities, IG's could develop this capability,
possibly by shifting resources currently dedicated to procedural
compliance audits.