How can agencies do a better job of segregation of duties?
With the current economic climate and limited resources, it can be difficult for agencies to effectively implement internal controls across all aspects of the agency. Generally speaking, internal controls can be categorized as preventive, detective and corrective. The great thing about segregation of duties is it does double duty — acting as a preventive as well as a detective control. Talk about bang for your buck! The basic idea is to prevent a situation in which the same person who perpetrates the fraud is also in the position to conceal it. If an agency finds itself in a situation where it cannot afford to properly enforce the segregation of duties control, one idea may be to have a supervisor conduct a review of a specific task based on a random sample. For example, the person who writes a check to a vendor should not be in the position to also sign/approve the check. However, some smaller organizations may only have one person responsible for paying vendors. In this case, I would
