Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) have a tall order. In order to combat fraud, waste, abuse, and other criminal activity within government agencies, inspectors general (IGs) and auditors must abide by a number of stringent regulations when performing audits and investigations. Combined with the high number of cases OIGs must handle each year, the need for robust audit and investigation management tools becomes paramount. Yet many OIGs are set back by legacy programs and processes that threaten to impede essential work. We’ve identified three unique challenges that OIGs face when modernizing their processes, and how eCase solves each of these.
1. Improving Flexibility of an Audit or Investigations Management System
For OIGs, maintaining compliance with security policies is essential when seeking to modernize application hosting and data. One of our recent customers, USPS OIG, sought to migrate their service to a web-based, FedRAMP-certified cloud-hosted environment.
eCase Audit provided an innovative approach to a web-based system hosted in a secure, FedRAMP-certified environment. Through eCase Audit, the client will now be able to access their audit management application through the web browser, enabling the flexibility and better performance of essential tasks and functions without sacrificing security. Despite the transition to a web-based environment, USPS OIG’s auditors will still have the ability to conduct necessary field work without an internet connection through eCase Audit’s new Offline Client module—available for download in the Microsoft Store.
2. Data Migration from a Legacy System
Data migration can pose a huge challenge for OIGs that have vast records with long-standing legacy systems. USAID OIG, another recent customer of eCase Investigations, sought to migrate to eCase from a legacy system that failed to provide flexibility in maintaining internal controls for future policy development.
Through eCase, we provide continuous administrative capabilities that users can modify to meet various data migration needs including data collection, internal processing, and reporting. Our team is able to work tirelessly to migrate years of legacy data from any legacy tool into eCase with a large data migration. Our services include data translation, mapping, and development work to build and model data for import into eCase.
3. Collaborating with Agency Program Offices
In the past, OIGs had considered application integration and collaboration with program offices too risky to accomplish. However, through a secure environment that offers platform-level role-based security and permissions, such collaboration is possible.
A third recent customer of eCase, EAC OIG, will be using eCase to provide an efficient and effective approach to the OIG and agency management working collaboratively in a single tool. After a full migration to eCase, the OIG will be able to automatically import completed projects to resolution modules and enable collaborative work on planning and implementing corrective actions.
Through eCase’s platform-level role-based security, the OIG and agency program offices can leverage a single platform for completing their audit engagements and resolving corrective actions from those engagements. The configuration capabilities of the platform enable trusted access ensuring that agency users can only access resolution data that is specifically made available to them.
There is a way to solve the unique modernization challenges that OIGs face while maintaining the highest standards for security, efficiency, and transparency. To learn more about our governance, risk, and compliance automation solutions, eCase Audit and eCase Investigations, please email info@ains.com or request a demo today.
