Ms. Martin stated that the annual closing package and audit reports were submitted to the Finance and Administration Cabinet on October 15th.
President Burse directed the Board members to the External Audit Report of Tronconi Segarra and Associates that was included in the Board package. He stated that the report lays out what they are going to do and that findings are not reported. Per the President, in his conversation with the auditor he was told that the process and procedure had been that as the auditors collect findings and they shared them with the university staff to get a response. Once all had been collected they were given to the President. At that point they are provided to the Board. President Burse stated he told the auditors that he never knew of any audit process that worked that way. He further stated that going forward the process and protocol will be different. He informed the auditors that as findings are found they should be shared with the Board at that point in time and then given to staff and administrators. President Burse informed the committee that the auditors will be on campus next week and when they are finished with the findings they will share them with him and he will immediately share them with the Board.
Melinda Impellizzeri, Special Assistant to the President, gave a summary of the Preliminary Audit Report of Tronconi Segarra and Associates. Ms. Impellizzeri stated that she, Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Conner uncovered quite a few observations with the reconciliation of student balances while trying to better understand the shortfall. She stated that there seemed to be gaps between processing in various functions. This information was shared with President Burse with a request to have the external auditors perform a special audit. Ten students were randomly chosen for the Special Audit and the audit findings show in every area a lack of processes, unknown processes, missing processes and contradictory processes. Ms. Impellizerri stated that as directed by President Burse we have undertaken a project to process map every area, re-educate everyone in the university and make sure it is an integrated process so we no longer work in silos and that we are supporting the goals of the university. Ms. Impellizzeri informed the committee that the auditor's full report will be delivered next week which will include examples of process findings and recommendations.
President Burse spoke about several issues with the Banner system. He informed the committees that work on the contract with Banner had been initiated but we are at an impasse with Ellucian because he insisted on inclusion of a provision in the contract that states what Ellucian advertises that Banner does should be included in the contract and Ellucian has balked. President stated that we are struggling through with Banner but at the same time we are looking at other vendors who are at a fraction of what we were going to pay Ellucian to fix Banner.
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