Bigger: Internal auditors hard to find

It would be significantly easier to find an experienced internal auditor if he could offer them a permanent position, says Auditor General Brian Bigger.

Bigger, who has been on the job in Sudbury since the office was created in 2009, said people with relevant experience and skills generally live in southern Ontario, because that's where the internal auditing jobs are. So his task is convincing someone to uproot themselves and come North to work on a limited contract.

“The challenge is finding people who have hands-on internal auditing experience ... someone with the relevant skill set,” Bigger said. “So that's the situation I'm in right now. And there's always the chance I'll be able to attract someone up to Sudbury.”

Bigger is looking for a permanent replacement for Senior Auditor Carolyn Jodouin, who left late in 2012. At the time, the auditor general was working on a one-year contract himself, and wasn't able to offer deals longer than his own. His contract has since been extended until December 2015.

But when he hired a replacement in March, Bigger was only allowed to offer a one-year contract, something he said would make it difficult to retain staff. Now that he's looking to hire again, he's urging city councillors to consider making the senior auditor position permanent.

Not only would it help attract experienced candidates, he said it would make it easier to keep them here once they come North. Audit committee chair Ron Dupuis said Wednesday the city is willing to authorize a three-year contract for a senior auditor, which is a positive step, Bigger said.

With tight municipal budgets, he said councillors are understandably wary of adding permanent staff. But he's hoping they'll consider an even longer term, so candidates won't feel as though they are taking a gamble by accepting the job.

“For us to be able to produce the number of audits we'd like to produce, we need to find the proper staffing solution up here in Sudbury,” Bigger said. “So I'm trying to clarify whether I can offer a three- or a five-year contract position. And is there any possibility that I can provide a permanent position for an auditor?”

After producing several audits in the first few years, work in the two-person auditor's office has slowed since Jodouin left. Only one of four audits planned for 2013 has been completed, as Bigger's own status was determined and he searched for a replacement. It's unlikely a new senior auditor will be on the job before the end of the year, he said.
“But I am working on audits right now, so we are moving forward and keeping busy,” he said. “We will continue to audit within the resources that council provides.”

Bigger's department has a budget of about $378,000, most of which goes to salaries. When options for creating the department were first proposed in 2007, hiring two or three permanent staff auditors was considered, as was not hiring anyone and having existing staffers report to an audit committee instead.

Since it was a new position, councillors were reluctant to hire permanent staff. So they created two contract positions, with an eye on reviewing the issue once the office started producing audits.

The department itself has been examined twice in the last year by outside internal auditors, both times receiving positive reviews. The most recent, by James Key of the Shenandoah Group, concluded that making the office permanent would be cheaper than hiring outside contractors, if the city wants audits of the same level and quality.

Greater Sudbury Mayor Marianne Matichuk has introduced a motion to make the department permanent, but it was deferred until Key could file his report. Matichuk said she will reintroduce her motion at a future meeting.

Historically, the city had an internal audit section from 2001-2005, which included two permanent staff and a budget of $170,000. The manager reported directly to the city's chief administrative officer until the positions were eliminated to save money in 2005. They were replaced by an ad hoc committee of council that contracted audits to an independent firm at a cost of $40,000.

The city changed course in 2009, joining Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, Markham and Oshawa as cities with a full-time auditor general's department. Since then, however, Bigger said AG's have become scarcer.

“Today, I'm the sole survivor outside of Toronto and Ottawa,” he said.