The COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak and Municipal Environment Auditing – Michael E Weintraub Esq
Michael E Weintraub Esq says many local government auditors were busy working. On attaining their audit plans at the start of the year. The auditors also did their sampling, testing transactions, and also fieldwork. At the beginning of the year, no one knew that within just a few months, there would be a massive pandemic that would hit the United States (not to mention, almost the entire world). And, by March 2020, local governments started to fully grasp the severity of the pandemic and its potential effects on in-person services.
Cities, states, and counties began declaring local emergencies. Local government services focused their efforts on offering essential services like waste removal, wastewater services, fire rescue, and water distribution and treatment.
Michael E WeintraubEsq: essential tips
As we are in an ongoing state of emergency, many cities are seeing declining revenues. This will impact levels of service across the board. In such a turbulent environment, audit organizations need to act progressively. According to Michael E Weintraub Esq, many city programs might not work in the same way they once did. Protests and also the pandemic increased auditors’ significance in ensuring innovation. Audit organizations need to act and plan ahead of time to assist and guide jurisdictions to move through this new reality. Some examples seen in cities across the US are:
- Berkeley
In Berkeley, the local auditor announced that it was necessary. To implement a budgetary audit of the police department. To examine the police budget. Since the last audit took place 11 years ago.
- San Jose
In San Jose, city auditors, through the appeal of the Emergency Operation Centre, conducted an audit of San Jose’s internal controls for recording pandemic associated expenses. There are also other plans to manage risks associated with reporting and tracking emergency costs to increase potential reimbursements.
In other cities (for instance, Beverly Hills), the following actions were implemented:
- Assessed the telework program, looking at Michael E Weintraub Esq whether policies. Were established and examining technological capacity, savings, and costs.
- Recognized services that can shift to online or remote settings, rather than continuing in-person. For those services that did switch to an online setting. It was necessary to evaluate the success and also the scopes of enhancement.
- Solicited staff as well as business input through the Trust and Innovation Portal of the auditor.
- Benchmarked other cities to recognize added approaches to improve cities.
Through constant innovation and also being adaptable, auditors can add value to any organization or government. This is true even during such turbulent times.