B.3 Scrutiny

The Audit Office issued an unqualified audit report on the Directorate’s 2014-15 financial statements and an unqualified report of factual findings on its 2014-15 statement of performance.

The Directorate resolved two of the four previously reported audit findings by:

• performing reviews of user access to the student administration system used by ACT Public Schools to process receipts and payments (Maze) to ensure that access was appropriate and in accordance with the approved policies and procedures of the Directorate. This reduces the risk of unauthorised (including fraudulent) access to student and financial information; and
• ensuring that schools documented the satisfactory receipt of goods and services before payments were made. This reduces the risk of payment irregularities which may be caused by error or fraud.

Two of the four previously reported findings were not resolved as:

• salary reports distributed to schools and business units in the Directorate were not always reviewed in a timely manner. This increases the risk of irregularities in payments to employees, which may be due to errors or fraud, not being promptly detected and addressed; and
• Maze does not have the capability to generate audit logs on access to the system and its data. Furthermore, the Directorate does not have a documented policy for the review of audit logs. The lack of review of audit logs increases the risk that erroneous or fraudulent changes to the Maze application and its data will not be promptly detected and rectified.

The Directorate has advised that it will address this audit finding as part of the replacement of Maze which commenced in 2015-16.

One new audit finding reported to the Directorate in 2014-15 related to the incorrect classification of a number of expense transactions as assets. The incorrect classification did not cause significant errors in the financial statements, however, the errors indicate that the Directorate should improve its processes for identifying and correctly classifying these transactions.

The Directorate has agreed to address all audit findings.

• In progress
• In progress

The Auditor-General’s report no. 5 of 2014 on Capital Works Reporting has an outstanding recommendation for the Education Directorate.

• Recommendation 2: The Commerce and Works Directorate’s Shared Services Procurement and directorates should develop capital works service level agreements, or the equivalent, by 31 December 2014. These should specify reporting responsibilities.

The ‘Whole of Government’ response to the audit was tabled in May 2016 when an implementation update was provided on ‘Recommendation 2’ which stated;

Procurement and Capital Works is developing service level agreements with those directorates which have annual capital works programs over $5 million. The draft framework for the agreements will be circulated for consideration in early May 2016 by the Capital Works and Procurement Committee. This framework will set the guiding principles, roles and responsibilities to inform the development of individual service level agreements for directorates.

• In progress