LANSING – An audit assessing the effectiveness of the state’s efforts to ensure reliability of data in the Enterprise Data Warehouse of the Department of Technology, Management and Budget yielded one material condition and three other reportable ones.

The most serious issue the Office of the Auditor General found with the EDW, noted as a material condition, was that the department, in conjunction with state agencies, had not fully established effective interface controls over the warehouse.

The auditor general reviewed interface controls for 100 selected interfaces, it said in its report, and by its assessment, DTMB and state agencies had no documentation of their interface strategy or interface design for 36 of the 100 interfaces, as well as had incomplete documentation for 50 of the 100 interfaces. Both are a degree of violation of the Federal Information System Controls Audit Manual in the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Further, DTMB and other state agencies did not implement effective interface reconciliation controls for 64 of the 100 interfaces tested, the audit found.

By and large, the auditor general recommended getting such controls in place, and the DTMB, in conjunction with state agencies, agreed with that recommendation. The department said it would update its EDW Guidelines for Best Practices and partner with the Department of Human Services to create an interface strategy and design for each DHS warehouse interface. DTMB also informed the auditor general that the Department of Treasury had identified similar concerns, and so it had already begun on resolutions.

As for reportable conditions, the report identified that DTMB, in conjunction state agencies, had not established an effective governance structure over the EDW. The report also noted that state agencies, in conjunction with DTMB, had not fully established and implemented effective user access controls over the EDW, nor had they fully established and implemented access controls over temporary privileged accounts.

The agency agreed with all of these assessments.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com