Follow-Up on Recommendations from Report No. 16-01, Report on Selected Executive Branch Departments’ Information Technology Expenditures

A Report to the Governor and the Legislature of the State of Hawai‘i

Hawaii State Auditor Report No. 18-07 May 2018

What we found in 2015

In Report No. 16-01, Report on Selected Executive Branch Departments’ Information Technology Expenditures, we noted that departments had varying interpretations of which goods and services constituted “IT expenditures.” As a result of this lack of standardization, IT expenditure data was spread throughout dozens of unrelated categories (known in accounting as object codes), thus making an accurate and comprehensive compilation of these costs extremely time-consuming, if not impossible to complete. In addition, without an annual reporting requirement to a central agency, the State was unable to manage its IT resources in the short-term or plan for long-term IT growth. We found that, while IT expenditures had increased significantly, IT staffing had flattened out. We also noted that a handful of vendors were providing goods and services to a majority of departments.

What we found this year

Our follow-up on the implementation of recommendations made in Report No. 16-01, conducted between February and April 2018, included interviews with selected personnel, examining relevant documents and records, and evaluating whether ETS’ actions appeared to fulfill our recommendations. We found that ETS has implemented two recommendations, partially implemented two recommendations, and that one recommendation has not yet been implemented at this time.

Recommendations and their status

Our follow-up efforts were limited to reviewing and reporting on the implementation of our audit recommendations. We did not explore new issues or revisit old ones that did not relate to the original recommendations. The following details the audit recommendations made and the current status of each recommendation based on our review of information and documents provided by ETS.

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