Ms CARNEY - 2005-11-30
The Auditor-General undertook a compliance audit of the Department of Justice, as detailed in page 20 in your department’s annual report which was tabled during the last sittings. Is it not true that over $6000 from the Accountable Officers’ Trust Account was unreconciled; in other words, it went missing? Do you know what happened to that money? Also, why where there no fraud control arrangements in place for that trust account?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, if the member is referring to the Auditor-General’s end of year Agency Compliance Audit, page 20 - is that what you said? I presume so, from your silence. The Auditor-General’s Compliance Audit found that the department’s accounting and control systems were satisfactory, with the exception of an unreconciled item in the Accountable Officer’s Trust Account and in debt collection.
Regarding the unreconciled item, which I believe is the one you are referring to, it refers to a discrepancy between the Prisoner Money Management System, or PMMS, and the Government Accounting System. The PMMS is a database that records income and expenditure for the prisoners who are held in custody in Darwin and Alice Springs Correctional Centres, and it was first installed in November 1999. Since its installation, the system has not been able to be reconciled due to several technical problems. There are in excess of 5000 transactions per month at each site, and a majority of these transactions are processed by manual data entry.
In January 2005, an upgrade to the system was effected, and at this point it was identified that the prisoners’ balances report from PMMS was providing incorrect data. In short, this means that the department has been attempting to match an incorrect PMMS figure with the Government Accounting System, or GAS.
Recently, an officer was taken off-line for a period of four weeks to reconcile the system. The officer was able to complete a fully reconciled statement between PMMS and GAS from the period 1 July 2005 to 31 July 2005. It is possible that some prisoners may have been adversely affected by the problems; however it is also possible that some prisoners might have received more money than they should have. A number of refinements have been identified and are currently being scoped within the system programmers to stage an implementation resolution to the problem over the next three months or so.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, if the member is referring to the Auditor-General’s end of year Agency Compliance Audit, page 20 - is that what you said? I presume so, from your silence. The Auditor-General’s Compliance Audit found that the department’s accounting and control systems were satisfactory, with the exception of an unreconciled item in the Accountable Officer’s Trust Account and in debt collection.
Regarding the unreconciled item, which I believe is the one you are referring to, it refers to a discrepancy between the Prisoner Money Management System, or PMMS, and the Government Accounting System. The PMMS is a database that records income and expenditure for the prisoners who are held in custody in Darwin and Alice Springs Correctional Centres, and it was first installed in November 1999. Since its installation, the system has not been able to be reconciled due to several technical problems. There are in excess of 5000 transactions per month at each site, and a majority of these transactions are processed by manual data entry.
In January 2005, an upgrade to the system was effected, and at this point it was identified that the prisoners’ balances report from PMMS was providing incorrect data. In short, this means that the department has been attempting to match an incorrect PMMS figure with the Government Accounting System, or GAS.
Recently, an officer was taken off-line for a period of four weeks to reconcile the system. The officer was able to complete a fully reconciled statement between PMMS and GAS from the period 1 July 2005 to 31 July 2005. It is possible that some prisoners may have been adversely affected by the problems; however it is also possible that some prisoners might have received more money than they should have. A number of refinements have been identified and are currently being scoped within the system programmers to stage an implementation resolution to the problem over the next three months or so.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016