Ops32.doc.
PERFORMANCE AUDIT FOR OMAHA PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
DEFINITION.
A performance audit is an objective and systematic examination of evidence to provide an independent assessment of the performance of a school district program, activity, or function in order to provide information to improve public accountability and help decision-making by administrators with responsibility to oversee or begin corrective action. The auditor must be independent, from outside the administration. Comprehensive written reports must go to the administration in a timely manner. This audit would follow accepted government auditing standards, unlike the Hayes & Associates audit completed in August, 2001.
RATIONALE.
Performance audits would give OPS a valuable management tool with tough, nationally-recognized auditing principles.
OBJECTIVES.
I
suggest that OPS begin annual performance audits that include economy,
efficiency, and program audits. The
first two would determine if OPS is using its resources, such as personnel and
property, economically and efficiently.
They would find the causes of inefficiencies or uneconomical
practices. This audit could discover if
OPS is following sound procurement practices, buying resources at appropriate
costs, properly maintaining its resources, avoiding duplication of effort by
employees and work that serves little or no purpose, avoiding idleness and
overstaffing, using efficient operating procedures, using the optimum amount of
resources like staff to produce or deliver the appropriate quantity and quality
of goods or services in a timely manner, implementing a good management control
system to measure, report, and monitor a program for efficiency, and using
valid and reliable reported measures of economy. They would determine if OPS
has complied with laws and regulations on economy and efficiency.
A
program audit would determine the extent to which the desired results or
benefits established by the district are being achieved. This audit would gauge the effectiveness of
programs, activities, and functions. It
would determine if a program has achieved its desired level of results, would
assess the effectiveness of program components, identify factors hampering
satisfactory performance, determine if administration has considered alternatives
to implement a program that might show desired results more effectively at a
lower cost, determine if a program complements, duplicates, or conflicts with
other programs, identify means of making programs work better, assess the
adequacy of administrator control system for measuring, reporting, and
monitoring program effectiveness, and determine if administration has valid and
reliable reported measures of program effectiveness.
CONCLUSION.
The
OPS board should welcome, not fear a performance audit, because it is a
valuable tool to see what is working as intended and what is not working. It will almost always result in significant savings.