Michigan Office of the Auditor General Thomas H. McTavish, C.P.A. Auditor General

Scott Strong, Deputy Auditor General, is pleased to announce that the Performance Audit of Vital Records and Health Data Statistics, Bureau of Epidemiology, Department of Community Health, is the winner of the Audit Operations Project Team Award (AOPTA) for the six-month period ending September 30, 2005. The audit team consisted of audit supervisor Mike Gardner, staff auditors Corrie Jameson and Connie Jones, audit division administrator Rick Stafford, and audit manager Tom Beuerle.

This project is an excellent example of a high profile and high impact performance audit of issues that are high interest to the Legislature, to the media, and to the State's citizens in general. In addition, the audit team generally met all of its audit timelines and completed the audit substantially within its budget.
The Bureau's mission is to maintain the statewide vital record system, which contains over 30 million records dating back to 1867, and to provide health related data and information to various users. A vital record is a certificate or registration of birth, death, marriage, or divorce or an acknowledgement of parentage or other related data. During 2003, the Bureau processed approximately 155,000 customer requests for copies of vital records, 85% of which were birth certificates, made legal changes to about 21,500 vital records and received approximately 317,700 new records.

The audit team determined that the Bureau did not have controls over vital records that would prevent individuals from creating false identities that could be used, for example, to illegally obtain driver's licenses, passports and Social Security cards.

The Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has stated that certificates of birth provide a means for opening many doors in society, from citizenship privileges to social security benefits. Individuals can use birth certificates to obtain driver licenses, passports, social security cards, or other documents with which to create false identities. Therefore, the need to establish sufficient controls over the birth registration process is of national concern.

The audit report generated substantial interest from the Legislature and received extensive coverage in the media, including articles in both MIRS and GONGWER. Newspapers and other media outlets that provided coverage of the audit included the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the Oakland Press, the Macomb Dailey, the Muskegon Chronicle and the Associated Press. Also several television stations reported on the audit.

The audit report contained 11 findings, 2 of which were classified as material conditions:

The Bureau did not periodically review the controls of local registrar offices or hospitals to ensure that these local units had sufficient safeguards over vital records, safety paper or blank records used to generate vital records

The Bureau did not retrieve vital records in the possession of local clerk offices that no longer had the authority to accept or issue these documents.

Scott Strong, Deputy Auditor General, is pleased to announce that the Performance Audit of Michigan School Readiness Program, Department of Education, is the winner of the AOPTA for the six months ended March 31, 2005. The audit team consisted of Mary Jo Koschay, Audit Supervisor; team members: Pam Huffman and Melanie Alvord; technical assistance provided by Andy Mitchell; Therese Regner, Audit Division Administrator; and Laura Hirst, Audit Manager.

The Michigan School Readiness Program (MSRP) provides funding to local schools and private non-profit entities to fund high-quality preschool programs for four-year-old children who may be at risk of becoming educationally disadvantaged and who may have extraordinary need for special assistance. MSRP is funded from 100% General Fund/General Purpose appropriations and serves approximately 25,000 children each year. The Department distributed approximately $85 million in MSRP grants in fiscal year 2003-04.

The audit contained 4 findings, involved travel to several different school districts, and completion of a comprehensive analysis of program and student success. The Department had not evaluated the success of the program or its students since the program's inception during the 1995-96 school year and performed only limited onsite monitoring, choosing to rely heavily on a self assessment of program success completed by the schools.

The audit crew assessed the success of the program by working with the Department of Education, CEPI (DMB) and 25 local school districts to obtain identifying information about 5,398 pre-school students over the last 5 years. Once the data had been collected, the audit crew, with the assistance of Andy Mitchell, matched the local school district information to data that was retained at the State level in CEPI's data base. The audit crew then evaluated the students' fourth grade MEAP scores, attendance, and grade retention to evaluate the success of MSRP.

The audit work showed that overall at-risk students that participated in MSRP were significantly more successful than at-risk students that did not participate in the program. Further, the audit work showed that overall the at-risk students that participated in MSRP were performing almost as well as the students that are not at-risk. Further analysis by preschool program did show that some preschool programs' students were not performing as well as other at-risk students. This analysis not only supported the finding that the department should be tracking student progress to evaluate the success of the program, but also showered the department that this type of analysis can be done in an efficient and timely manner with its current resources.

The audit crew evaluated the department's monitoring procedures by conducting site visits at 10 schools. The audit crew reviewed 246 student files to verify supporting documentation related to program eligibility and requirements and noted several exceptions even though the department had been conducting a limited number of these types of visits. In addition, the audit crew evaluated 38 school's self assessments compared to an independent consultants assessment of those same schools and determined that the self assessment scores were inflated and, therefore, not the best indicator of program quality or successes. These findings helped convince the Department that independent monitoring is necessary to ensure program compliance. The audit crew also convinced the Department that through data analysis and revised reporting requirements, it could monitor programs more efficiently and utilize its limited resources to focus on-site visits to programs where students are not showing success.

The audit crew accomplished this complex analysis, coordinated the travel during the summer months and issued the report within the audit budget. Throughout the audit, the crew held bi-weekly status meetings with the Department to discuss and resolve issues and to present potential audit findings. These discussions, during the fieldwork, facilitated the Department's timely response to the report, eliminated the need for an audit conference, and resulted in the timely processing and release of the report. The Department communicated that it intended to use the recommendations to initiate new procedures, work with CEPI to capture preschool data, and attempt to obtain additional resources to support the program.

Click to View