Audit Objective

Determine whether Freeport Union Free School District (District) officials appropriately tracked, inventoried and safeguarded information technology (IT) assets acquired or in use during the audit period.

Key Findings

District officials did not appropriately track or inventory IT assets, maintain complete IT inventory records or establish adequate controls to safeguard IT assets. As a result, officials cannot assure taxpayers that money invested in IT assets has been appropriately spent or safeguarded.

We selected 50 IT assets to confirm their location and that they were inventoried, and 10 additional IT assets to confirm they were inventoried. We found 43 percent of the sampled IT assets were not properly accounted for. Specifically:

• Four IT assets with combined costs of approximately $1,500 could not be located and were not inventoried and seven IT assets with combined costs of $2,050 were inventoried but could not be located.
• Fifteen IT assets with combined costs of approximately $12,500 were not inventoried.

In addition, annual inventories were not conducted, IT equipment was not properly or securely stored and officials did not adopt a comprehensive written policy for IT equipment inventory.

Key Recommendations

• Maintain complete, accurate and up-to-date inventory records.
• Perform annual and complete inventories.

District officials disagreed with certain aspects of our findings and recommendations. Appendix B includes our comments on issues raised in the District’s response letter.