Audit Support
Agencies face increased scrutiny and stakeholders require greater accountability and transparency in how the government spends taxpayer dollars. Financial managers need effective audit readiness and remediation support to meet financial statement audit objectives and demonstrate that the agency’s operations comply with laws and regulations.
Unqualified overall audit opinions can obscure material weaknesses that underlie systematic financial management and internal control issues. Empirical can help agencies identify issues, provide process improvements and internal controls, and automate manual processes, leading to clean audit opinions void of any material weaknesses.
As a certified public accounting firm, Empirical has extensive experience supporting agencies in meeting their audit objectives and remediating noted deficiencies rapidly. Empirical leverages our certified pool of talent and develops innovative data, reporting, and analytic tools to effectively support our customers’ audit readiness and remediation requirements.
Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – Audit Readiness Success
Overview: ICE required assistance in reviewing internal control gaps and weaknesses and determining compliance with regulatory requirements, including those promulgated by OMB and Treasury. ICE needed additional support to complete an analysis internally.
Solutions: Empirical reviewed the OCFO DCFMS current budget execution process and identified opportunities to improve internal controls and the audit readiness process. The team documented process flows and procedures for recording warrants received from Treasury Governmentwide Accounting (GWA) through stakeholder interviews. Empirical helped ICE to create and update standard operating procedures (SOP), incorporating approved recommendations and solutions.
Results: ICE was able to move the organization forward toward a clean audit opinion.
