Audit Objective

Determine whether Pine Bush 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 40 IT assets to confirm their location and that they were inventoried, and 15 additional IT assets to confirm they were inventoried. We found 7 percent of the sampled assets were not properly accounted for. Specifically:

• Four Chromebooks, with a total cost of approximately $1,300, of the initial 40 IT assets could not be physically located but were inventoried. The additional 15 assets were properly inventoried.

In addition, annual inventories were not conducted, network hardware storage locations were not secured, and officials did not adopt a comprehensive written policy for establishing and maintaining IT equipment inventory.

Key Recommendations

• Ensure District inventory records are complete and include the detail necessary to adequately track and locate IT assets.
• Perform annual and complete physical inventories and compare results to inventory records.

District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and have initiated or indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.