Audit Objective

Determine whether Lewiston-Porter Central 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 72 IT assets to confirm their location and that they were inventoried, and 10 additional IT assets to confirm they were inventoried. We found 33 percent of the sampled assets were not properly accounted for. Specifically:

• Seventeen IT assets (11 Chromebooks and six Apple devices) with estimated total costs of $5,820 based on recent purchases could not be located.
• Ten IT assets nine with a combined cost of approximately $14,910 and one without a cost recorded) were not inventoried.

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