Control Self Assessment:

Preparing you to meet your “what ifs” head-on.

Announcing the Control Self Assessment (CSA) program —

A new initiative from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts that can help you prevent and control loss of valuable data and resources, increase efficiency and save taxpayer money.

We can help you identify your organization’s risks within functional areas such as asset and risk management, financial administration, purchasing, human resource management and tax and revenue administration, and guide you to take protective measures to save your resources.

The Benefits

Conducting a control self assessment can help you maintain the security and integrity of your governmental entity and its resources. A control assessment will enable you to:

offset any unacceptable risks to prevent costs to taxpayers, lawsuits and negative media attention;
learn the relative importance of risks and devise control measures;
make decisions on appropriate control measures that are cost-effective;
expand employees’ understanding of their area’s risk and internal controls;
improve employees’ understanding of how key activities and duties are related to those of other employees or work teams;
increase employees’ involvement in managing risks; and
discover and prepare for new risks before they happen.

Empowering Local Governments

The Comptroller’s CSA program is designed to help you fully identify key operations, activities, policies and procedures; address potential risks within these or other functional areas of your organization; and help you control or mitigate them. On request, management systems analysts with the Comptroller’s Local Government Assistance Division (LGA), working with your key personnel and elected officials, will conduct an on-site assessment of local government operations of the offices of a city, county or special district. The results are published in a report to provide local government leaders with information to better manage risks leading to improved efficiencies and savings. The report also makes recommendations on using a monitoring plan that is included with the CSA program. Implementation of any changes to the levels of controls or mitigations is entirely up to local officials. This service is provided without cost to the local government.

Identifying Risk

We define a risk as a negative event that makes it difficult or impossible to successfully perform a key process. A governmental entity’s risks could include the potential for loss of valuable data or resources due to a natural disaster, error or fraud. Some possible real-life risk scenarios for local governments include the following:

An ice storm, hurricane or flood hits your city. If employees are not able to come to work, is there a contingency plan?
A sudden loss of key personnel. Are there employees who are cross-trained to prevent a disruption in staff support and customer service?
Lost or stolen computer data. Are processes in place to protect valuable data?
Compliance of management operations, policies and procedures with state law and best practices of public administration, which includes sound accounting, internal controls and other controls and mitigations?

Functional Areas

Functional areas may include asset and risk management, human resource management, purchasing, financial administration, tax and revenue administration, facilities management or any other area requested by the local government.

Potential Participants

Local governmental entities’ elected officials and key personnel are eligible for participation in this program. During the control self assessment session, your participants will work with the LGA team to identify risks and develop solutions to mitigate them.