Audits – PolyWogg.ca

All the fish? Photo radar use in Ontario

November 5 2025

I don’t often start off a post with a joke, but this is a bit of a different topic.

A man is driving down the road doing the speed limit and he is being passed by just about every other car on the road. He decides to increase his speed a bit, and then a bit more. You know, “just keeping up with traffic”. After a few kilometres of going about 15km per hour over the speed limit, a police officer pulls him over.

As the police officer writes out the ticket, the guy is upset. Everyone else was speeding but he got a ticket. And he wasn’t even the fastest one! Several cars passed him! He shares his thoughts with the police officer, trying to get some sympathy. All the cop says is, “Okay” and keeps writing.

He finally asks the cop if he thinks it is fair that he gets a ticket and the others don’t. The cop asks him, “Well, let me ask you something. Do you ever go fishing?”.

“Sure, I do”, the guy answers.

“Well,” the cop says. “Do you ever catch all the fish?”

Every time someone talks about automated speed enforcement (ASE) photo radar cameras, I am reminded of the joke.… Read the rest

The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 3

December 14 2017

This is my last post on the Phoenix audit by the Office of the Auditor-General. In the first of three parts (The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 1), I talked about governance and oversight. Part two (The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 2) dealt with the level of details provided in terms of the state of pay. In both areas, there were missed opportunities galore.

Today I want to talk about the way forward.

What were the criteria?

There really weren’t any forward-looking ones, at least not upfront. They had some generic elements under governance, but that was it.

What the REAL criterion should have had

It is pretty simple — is there a plan in place going forward that addresses major issues, is risk-based, and is written down. There are lots of bells and whistles beyond that, things like cost and timelines, but the most basic element is “Do they have a plan?”

What did the audit find?

The audit found that

Departments and agencies had significant difficulties in providing timely and accurate pay information and in supporting employees in resolving pay problems
A sustainable solution will take years and cost much more than the $540 million the government expected to spend to resolve pay problems

What COULD the audit have found?

… Read the rest

The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 2

December 14 2017

Earlier, I ranted about the actual audit of Phoenix that was done by the Office of the Auditor General (A disappointing audit of the Phoenix problems). And in my post yesterday (The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 1), I talked about what I expected to see or at least thought we could have seen, regarding governance and oversight.

Today I want to talk about the current state of pay requests outstanding.

What were the criteria?

There were two elements to the state of pay, and the first one was:

Problems related to paying public service employees are identified, and the nature and impact of these problems are understood.

To understand the first problem, the auditors relied upon the following documents.

Pay Disbursement Administrative Services Order, 2011
Directive on Financial Management of Pay Administration, Treasury Board
Policy on Results, Treasury Board
Directive on Results, Treasury Board
Supporting Effective Evaluations: A Guide to Developing Performance Measurement Strategies, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
COBIT 5: Enabling Processes, Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA

As with the review yesterday, the policy on results, directive on results, guide to PM strategies, and COBIT 5 are virtually worthless to the exercise.… Read the rest

The Phoenix audit we could have had – Part 1

December 12 2017

When I read the Office of the Auditor General’s audit of Phoenix, I was beyond disappointed (A disappointing audit of the Phoenix problems). In part, I think it is because I am too familiar with audits from my previous job where I read just about every audit done by my department in the last nine years, plus some of the broader OAG ones. Yep, I’m a public admin geek. I was even somewhat amused when I saw the news coverage about how aggressive the report was in its condemnation. And, if you weren’t a regular reviewer of audits, you might just go with the press conference and some of the findings and think, “Okay, they’re being appropriately harsh”.

Except the OAG knows how to be harsh when something isn’t working, and the language they would use for that kind of screw-up wasn’t present in the report. So let’s look at the report and see what they COULD (or even should?) have said, but didn’t.

What were the criteria?

Let’s go in reverse order, and start with the third criterion that the auditors set up in their audit. They based that criterion on a bunch of documents, including:

Financial Administration Act
Public Service Employment Act
Department of Public Works and Government Services Act
Shared Services Canada Act
Pay Disbursement Administrative Services Order, 2011
Policy on Internal Control, Treasury Board
Directive on Financial Management of Pay Administration, Treasury Board
Policy on Terms and Conditions of Employment and the Directive on Terms and Conditions of Employment, Treasury Board
Policy Framework for People Management, Treasury Board
Policy Framework for the Management of Compensation, Treasury Board
COBIT 5: Enabling Processes, ISACA

Now, here’s the thing.… Read the rest

A disappointing audit of the Phoenix problems

November 23 2017

As a civil servant, I was incredibly disappointed with the recent Phoenix audit, although maybe I just expected too much of it. Things that should have been clearly there, I would have thought, were in fact absent. Wording that I expected to be extremely harsh was toned down. Recommendations that would seem to be obvious ways forward were missing in action.

A friend asked me earlier this week where my indignant anger was at the fiasco and I think part of my passivity was because I knew the audit was coming. And I expected it to be a bombshell…a true blockbuster for its impact. Based on the actual wording, it seems more like they were going for a children’s firecracker that fizzled.

I expect three things from an audit:

A clear articulation of the project’s goal and what they were trying to do;
A clear indication of assessment/analysis of performance based on evaluation against an objective standard; and,
Clear indications of recommendations for a way forward and response by the organization how they’re going to address the recommendations.

This audit doesn’t do any of those three things.

Understanding what an audit actually does

Most people hear the word audit and they immediately think of audits like what happens to taxpayers when they get audited by Revenue Canada or the Internal Revenue Service.… Read the rest

My cold, crass heart and Phoenix victims

November 21 2017

I wrote earlier on Phoenix and attempted to deconstruct the mess that it has become, although perhaps it is more apt to say the mess it was from the beginning and remains so even now. My focus was on the process, and some people asked me about an apparent lack of sensitivity or where my anger was for the disaster on the victims’ behalf. I’ll defer my anger to my next post, as it goes in a slightly different direction than most.

But let’s address a couple of those sympathy concerns.

First, am I cold, heartless, unsympathetic? Not really, but I am capable of writing about it in a dispassionate tone. Partly because it’s public administration and anything less dissolves into rhetoric. And partly as I view public issues like this almost like a battlefield of wounded. And you have to triage the victims somehow, see who you need to stabilize quickly while prioritizing the serious cases to the head of the line.

Sure, I said upfront that everyone should be paid in full, on time and without reservation. Saying it is easy. It’s a fundamental principle.

But they weren’t paid in full, or in some cases, at all. Nor were they paid on time, or in some cases, at all.… Read the rest

Deconstructing the disaster that is Phoenix

November 19 2017

It would seem, almost without saying, that if you work for an organization, you should get paid promptly and properly. In international organizations, there is a refrain that is heard for paying of dues — in full, on time, and without reservation. The only time that people should be having problems getting paid is if there is a glitch in paperwork or computers, or maybe when they’re first starting (longer lead time), or perhaps if the company is having cash-flow problems. None of them are acceptable, but the reasons make sense.

On the surface, an organization like the federal government with more than 250K workers should expect at any one time, perhaps an issue rate of 1-3%. Particularly when the people have been working for the organization for a while, most are on salary rather than shifts and hourly totals that change (i.e. requiring the submission of detailed timesheets), and nothing has changed. So when people see the disaster that is Phoenix, it’s hard to fathom “what went wrong?” other than complete incompetence, even if the numbers are not as bad as they first appear.

Initial context

While lots of people erroneously point to the old system as “working just fine”, the government had a problem.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The first rule of fraud – blame the auditors?

January 12 2016

I was a bit surprised by a recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision that upheld the 2014 decision against the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche. Basically, the courts found them liable for auditing Livent Inc (Garth Drabinsky and company) and giving it an unqualified “clean audit” statement over several years despite the fact that Drabinsky and others involved were well-known for being creative with their financing and accounting. After Drabinsky sold off the business, it collapsed because it was a giant fraud.

Until these cases, there was a Supreme Court case (Hercules Managements Ltd. v. Ernst & Young) precedent that has generally been interpreted as saying “if a company goes belly up, even for fraud, you can’t sue the auditors for missing it”. Given this precedent, which has been binding for some time (1997), Deloitte might be surprised too, and chances are that an appeal will be launched to take it the Supreme Court — and with an $118M settlement against it, an appeal could be worthwhile.

Appeal court Justice Robert Blair ruled Friday that the original trial judge was correct in concluding Deloitte was negligent in its work on the audit of Livent’s 1997 year-end financial statements, as well as the interim statements for the second and third quarters of 1997.