How does your Local Government Stack Up? A Brief Look into the Existence of the Internal Audit Function Cherry Bekaert LLP 200 East Broward Boulevard Suite 2000 Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301 P 954.556.1720
How Does Your Local Government Stack Up? The Internal Audit Function can provide many benefits to a government, including testing existence and effectiveness of internal controls; preventing and detecting fraud, waste and abuse; monitoring compliance with laws and regulations; and determining efficiency and effectiveness of the government s programs. The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) issued a Best Practices, recommending that all State and Local Governments consider the feasibility of establishing a formal internal audit function http://www.gfoa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1460 We conducted an analysis 3 of the existence of Internal Audit in the Top 10 Cities 1 in the U.S. and Top 100 Cities 1 in the Southeast 2 and presented our results below. Analysis Expectation: Before we began our research, based on our own client experiences, we had a general expectation that the larger Cities would have an Internal Audit Function. We also expected that at some population point, we would no longer see the existence of an Internal Audit Function. Analysis and Sample: Because Cherry Bekaert s footprint is the Southeast, we originally conducted our analysis on the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast. However, auditor judgment got the best of us, and prompted us to see whether our sample (the Southeast) was representative of the population (the U.S.). The Top 100 Cities in the U.S. had estimated populations ranging from 210,855 to 8,244,910; the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast had estimated populations ranging from 61,209 to 827,908. Of the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast, exactly 20 Cities are included within the Top 100 Cities in the U.S.
Analysis Results: Top 10 Cities in the U.S. and Southeast: As we expected, every City in the Top 10 U.S. and Southeast Cities has an Internal Audit Function. These Top 10 Cities and their populations are identified below:
Top 100 Cities in the Southeast: Our analysis using the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast allowed us to analyze smaller populations, where we expected to find a point at which Cities did not have an Internal Audit Function. We found that: Of the Top 25 Cities in the Southeast, only 3 do not have an Internal Audit Function. Of the Top 50 Cities in the Southeast, only 12 do not have an Internal Audit Function. But, of the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast, a total of 54 do not have an Internal Audit Function.
The large increase in Cities without an Internal Audit Function in the 2nd half of the population seems to confirm our expectation that at a certain population point, the existence of the Internal Audit Function would cease. The below chart further demonstrates the existence and absence of Internal Audit based on population: 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 - < 100K 100K - 200K 200K - 300K > 300K Cities without an Internal Audit Function Cities with an Internal Audit Function Only 1 of 23 Cities with a population > 200,000 did not have an Internal Audit Function. Of 33 Cities with populations 100,000 200,000, 13 did not have an Internal Audit Function. Conversely, of 44 Cities with populations < 100,000, only 4 had an Internal Audit Function. Top 50 Cities in the U.S. with populations < 100,000: Based on our above results, it appears that Cities with populations < 100,000 in general do not have an Internal Audit Function. But before drawing any final conclusions that this is our population point, we wanted to further correlate our Southeast sample to the U.S. population.
There are 285 Cities in the U.S with populations > 100,000; there are 56 Cities in the Southeast with populations > 100,000. This represents 20% of the population, which is the same percentage we found when analyzing how many of the Top 100 Cities in the Southeast were included in the Top 100 Cities in the U.S. So, as the final step in our analysis, we looked at the Top 50 Cities in the U.S. with populations < 100,000, and found the following: Of the first ten Cities with populations < 100,000, 5 have an Internal Audit Function Of the first twenty-five Cities with populations < 100,000, 9 have an Internal Audit Function Of the first fifty Cities with populations < 100,000, only 13 have an Internal Audit Function (26%) While this percentage seems higher than our results from the Southeast, it is primarily due to the differences in population of our two samples. The populations for these 50 Cities ranged from 89,426 to 99,738, compared to the Southeast sample of populations < 100,000, which ranged from 61,209 to 99,727. Because of these population differences, we analyzed the Southeast sample with populations between 89,426 and 99,738. There were 10 Southeast Cities with populations between 89,426 and 99,738, of which 3 had an Internal Audit Function (30%). Our results of the Southeast sample again appear to be in line with those of the U.S population. How does your City stack up? To generalize, the vast majority of entities with populations > 100,000 have an Internal Audit Function. The vast majority of entities with populations < 90,000 do not have an Internal Audit Function. While we would back the GFOA and say all entities should consider the feasibility of implementing an Internal Audit Function, this analysis can provide governments with trends of other similar sized localities. For questions regarding this post, please contact Krista Edoff at kedoff@cbh.com