OCA Audit Report

Issued: April 2007

SUMMARY

This audit arose from the on-going risk assessment of the Austin Water Utility, along with specific Council questions about the reliability of conservation performance measurements, and was conducted in conjunction with the work of the Water Conservation Task Force.

Our objective was to assess the reliability of projected water savings from proposed conservation strategies being presented to the WCTF, including the underlying assumptions, algorithms and methodologies used to develop the projections, as well as to assess the reliability of reported water savings from current conservation strategies.

We found that:

• Estimated water savings calculated by AWU staff for proposed outdoor and City/Utility strategies, as presented to the WCTF, are reasonable and reliable with a few qualifications.

For outdoor strategies, our concerns center on the risk that some of the proposed strategies may not be achievable.

For City/Utility strategies, our concerns stem from both the costs and difficulties involved in implementing those strategies.

• Water savings calculations for current conservation strategies are consistent with best management practices, but we could not confirm the accuracy of some of the reported numbers.

Performance measurement calculations, tracking, documentation and reporting processes contain control weaknesses that make a few of the reported numbers error prone. For instance, currently three of the seven publicly reported performance measures are internally inconsistent, indicating one or more errors and/or error types in calculating and/or reporting.

• Conservation division staff will have to improve controls in their processes in order to prepare for an increased workload from the implementation of proposed conservation strategies.

Written procedures are not available for all processes, and tracking by strategy will need to be refined in order to account for all savings and costs in a way that allows for ease in monitoring performance against projections.

We have offered four recommendations that we believe will improve quality, transparency, and availability of information provided by the Utility to decision-makers and to customers. These recommendations address weak controls in the processes of calculating, tracking, documenting and reporting performance information. The Austin Water Utility’s management has agreed with all four of these recommendations and has already begun implementing two of them.

Download the entire text of our Water Conservation II: Reliability of Proposed and Current Conservation Stragies (Size: 574 KB) in Adobe Acrobat. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view these files. Or request a hard copy of this audit report, No. AU07102B, by submitting this audit report request form.

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