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King County Washington home

For Audit Liaisons

The role of audit liaison is an important one.

Responsibilities

  • Ensure that the auditors have full and unrestricted access to information1
  • Meet with someone on the audit team every two weeks (or as we both decide is best)
  • Communicate key takeaways from our meetings to your leadership reporting line and agency staff as appropriate
  • Facilitate data requests
  • Help auditors understand who to ask about what
  • Ensure auditors are informed of any new investigations, fraud allegations, legal proceedings in the agency that are related to the audit topic

Tips

  • Ask all your questions
  • Call, email, or message us any time
  • Be transparent — share what’s working well and where there are challenges (both about the audit topic and about the meta-audit process)
  • Take and/or encourage action in real time — we will report on progress we see toward resolving identified issues

Important things to know

  • Auditors typically do not want staff to create new documents in response to audit requests — saying that something does not exist is a fine answer.
  • You will have two drafts of the report to respond to: Technical Review and Executive Review. Reviewing Draft Reports explains each of the drafts and your responsibilities.
  • Audit findings have five specific components that we generally include in our reports:
  1. Criteria — What should be. Criteria are the standards of evaluation applied.
  2. Condition — What is. Condition should show the relationship between what exists and the standards expressed in criteria.
  3. Effect — So what? Effect shows the significance of differences between criteria and condition.
  4. Cause — Why? Cause should identify factors that, if removed or altered, would change the effect.
  5. Recommendation — What's next? Recommendations should address the root cause.

 

1 2.20.065 A. The auditor shall have full and unrestricted access to any and all persons, property and records in any form of any department, agency, program, or other entity, including contractors, and grantees, that receives appropriations or funding from the county or performs work on behalf of or under the authority of the county. Access to persons, property and records shall be provided to the auditor in a timely manner and without limitation.