Georgetown - South Otselic Central School District Internal Controls Over Computer Hardware and Data - Executive Summary The Georgetown-South Otselic Central School District (District) is located in ten towns in Chenango and Madison Counties. The District is governed by the Board of Education (Board) which comprises five elected members. The Board is responsible for the general management and control of the District’s financial and educational affairs. The Superintendent of Schools (Superintendent) is the chief executive officer of the District and is responsible, along with other administrative staff, for the day-to-day management of the District under the direction of the Board. The District uses one networked computer system, supported by several servers located at the High School and one server at the Elementary School, to process and store financial and non-financial data.1 The IT administrator, an employee of the Broome and Tioga Counties Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), oversees the network system. Scope and Objective The objective of our audit was to determine if internal controls over computer hardware and data were appropriately designed and operating effectively to adequately safeguard these assets. Our audit addressed the following related question for the period of July 1, 2005 through July 20, 2006:
Audit Results The Board has not established internal control policies and procedures to sufficiently address the safeguarding of computer data. Computer equipment and data are not protected from environmental factors, the District has no formal disaster plan and laptop inventory records were inaccurate. Comments of District Officials The results of our audit and recommendations have been discussed with District officials and their comments, which appear in Appendix A, have been considered in preparing this report. District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action. |