After finding discrepancies in the data generated by the Office of Special Counsel’s case tracking system — OSC 2000 — in the number of cases pending at the beginning of a fiscal year as well as cases received and closed during the year, GAO has called on the agency to follow structured life cycle management practices for its case tracking system.
OSC also did not provide GAO with sufficient documentation to demonstrate that fundamental system controls and safeguards are in place and operating as intended, according to GAO-07-318R.
It said the documentation would have been available had OSC followed a structured system development life cycle approach, in which system requirements are documented, along with tests of and changes to the system.
Controlling risks in areas such as information security is especially important to protect the personal information of complainants from inadvertent or deliberate misuse, fraudulent use, improper disclosure, corruption, or destruction, the report said.
It said that in comparing electronic data in OSC 2000 to the source case files for 158 randomly selected cases that it found that the three data elements used in OSC’s annual reports to Congress — date received, date closed, and case type — are sufficiently reliable for reporting purposes, but that OSC continues to have small discrepancies in summary data caused by inconsistent database queries.
