Making Sense of Dollars

Auditor-Controller Eric Woolery recently awarded staff working on our Central Accounting PS (CAPS) implementation team with a "Taxpayer Watchdog Award" for their hard work and dedication for bringing the system online on time and on budget.

 Also awarded a taxpayer Watchdog award was Administrative Manager II Alice Sinclair, whose eagle eye caught a billing error saving our department $561,000.00!

Do you know a Taxpayer Watchdog? You can nominate someone for the award by emailing us at pioac@ac.ocgov.com
Auditor-Controller Eric H. Woolery and Taxpayer Watchdog awardee Alice Sinclair
Auditor-Controller Woolery Presenting the Taxpayer Watchdog award to the CAPS+ Team
About the CAPS+
 The Auditor-Controller's office manages the CAPS+ system. CAPS+ is the County's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and is comprised of the Finance/ Procurement and Human Resources/ Payroll systems. CAPS+ is the County's system of record.

When Auditor-Controller Woolery took office, he inherited a system that was in a state of disrepair, was badly behind on its versioning schedule, and one where the vendor would not support the current versions. The team recently completed an upgrade to the Finance/Procurement side of the system. The Auditor-Controller's office moved the application from version 3.7 to 3.10. This provided the County with an application that greatly enhances the end-users' navigation of the system.

The Finance/Procurement system is now current with its maintenance level and is covered by the vendor. The team brought the system upgrade in on time and on budget. This success was achieved even though the project started two months late against a schedule that was only a year in length. For such a sophisticated system, the project was a major undertaking. The team had to train over 700 end-users on the upgraded system. The picture above shows Auditor-Controller Woolery at a team building luncheon. He was expressing his appreciation for the team's hard work and diligence in the success described.      

The Human Resources/Payroll upgrade is currently underway. Efforts were initiated in May, 2016. The County is scheduled to go live in May, 2017. The CAPS+ Human Resources/Payroll system will be upgraded from version 3.08 to version 3.11. Once we achieve that upgrade, that side of the system will also be under vendor maintenance. 

In closing, the Auditor-Controller's office has made certain that the CAPS+ system has a ten-year maintenance plan. The plan calls for regular maintenance upgrades to the ERP's application software as well as its hardware platform. Potential enhancements to the CAPS+ system's functionality has also been identified. The goal of this strategic plan is to ensure that this major County system is not allowed to fall into such disrepair in the future and that budgets are properly set so that there are no surprises. 
Recent Audit Reports
Recently, our offices released two new audits. The first was of the Health Care Agency/Public Guardian (HCA/PG) selected processes and controls, for the period ending December 31, 2015.

The audit identified one critical control weakness, one significant control weakness, four control findings, and two efficiency/effectiveness findings. HCA/PG concurred with five of the eight recommendations to address these issues. The HCA/PG audit follows an audit of the District Attorney/Public Administrator earlier this summer, in which the DA/PA concurred with all nine recommendations. To read the full report, click here.

The second report was on our own IT Security. This assessment revealed eight security findings, including one determined to be a critical control weakness that involves network security configurations. Due to the sensitive nature of the specific findings, the details of the report are not available to the public.

The audit identified one critical control weakness and four significant control weaknesses in the area of network security configurations and three control findings in the area of IT security policies. The results of this audit will be considered in the Internal Audit Division’s risk analysis in preparing future audit plans.

This general assessment was limited to a “desk audit” in which the IT Audit Manager utilized standard IT audit tools to query the network and conducted discussions with Auditor-Controller IT staff. The report is located here. 

Eric H. Woolery,
Auditor-Controller
12 Civic Center Plaza
Room # 200
P.O. Box 567
Santa Ana, CA. 92702
(714) 834-2450
(714) 834-2569 Fax
Office Hours 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Monday - Friday  
pioac@ac.ocgov.com