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Appendix B: Audit Methodology and Standards We conducted this audit pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the State Comptroller’s authority as set forth in Article 3 of the New York State General Municipal Law. To achieve the audit objective2 and obtain valid audit evidence, our audit procedures included the following: ll We interviewed District personnel to obtain an understanding of policies and procedures for the oversight of service contracts. ll We reviewed documentation on file, interviewed appropriate officials and reviewed Board minutes to identify all contractual service providers paid during the 2017-18 school year and determined that the District paid nine service providers approximately $8.3 million. We selected all payments totaling more than $4.3 million made to eight providers and judgmentally selected payments totaling $275,000 made to the ninth provider based on risks identified during our audit survey. The District had multiple contracts with this service provider with payments totaling nearly $4 million. The majority of these contracts were for support services commonly provided to school districts by this service provider and were deemed low risk based on our knowledge of this provider and school district operations. ll We reviewed all invoices and supporting documentation on file to ensure payments were properly supported, contained sufficient evidence that services were rendered and payments were made in accordance with written agreements. Where sufficient documentation was not on file, we worked with District officials to obtain additional documentation from service providers and verified that services were rendered and payments were appropriate. We also reviewed inventory records and scanned devices logged onto the District’s network to ensure that billing for information technology services was reasonable. ll We compared the amounts billed for services to the written agreements to ensure that the District paid the appropriate rates. We conducted this performance audit in accordance with GAGAS (generally accepted government auditing standards). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objective. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objective. Unless otherwise indicated in this report, samples for testing were selected based on professional judgment, as it was not the intent to project the results onto the entire population. Where applicable, information is presented concerning the value and/or size of the relevant population and the sample selected for examination. 2 We also issued a separate audit report, Lackawanna City School District – Tuition (2019M-59). Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller 5