National auditors group honors SAO staff for contributions to auditing, performance audit report

Employees and projects from the Office of the Washington State Auditor (SAO) were recently honored at the annual conference of the National State Auditors Association (NSAA) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Scott DeViney, who serves as Assistant Director of Quality Assurance at SAO, was honored with a President's Award for his contributions to NSAA's 2021 Peer Review Training Taskforce. With a small group of volunteers from other state audit offices, DeViney developed a series of training videos on the peer review process.

“Scott's focus on preparing quality training has benefitted SAO and the state of Washington for a long time and now NSAA members and staff, as well,” said State Auditor Pat McCarthy. “I'm proud of Scott and all of SAO for their continued national leadership in government accountability and transparency.”

From left to right: Daniel Crossman (Nevada Legislative Auditor), Michelle Fellows (SAO Performance Auditor), Erin Catterlin (SAO Senior Performance Auditor), Shauna Good (SAO Principal Performance Auditor), and Greg Griffin (Georgia State Auditor).
Photo courtesy of Glenda Johnson (Director of Communications and Operations, NASACT)

Also honored at the 2022 conference were members of an SAO performance audit team, for their report “Assessing the Workplace Culture at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.” NSAA's Excellence in Accountability Awards Committee selected the project as winner in the 2022 Large Performance Audit category.

This was the first performance audit in the nation to broadly assess the workplace culture at a state agency. It used many innovative methods to collect and analyze the data, drawing on research methods used in the field of applied cultural anthropology. The audit inquired about factors that shape the workplace at the agency, how the culture affected its performance and ability to achieve its mission, and the steps leadership could take to improve the agency's workplace culture.

“Every applicant for an Excellence in Accountability award is to be commended for the levels of professional integrity, quality and innovation that are apparent throughout NSAA's member offices,” said Dan Crossman, chair of the awards committee, in certifying the award.

The four-person performance audit team included Principal Performance Auditor Shauna Good, Senior Performance Auditors Erin Catterlin and Emily Cimber, and staff auditor Michelle Fellows. The audit was conducted under the supervision of SAO's Director of Performance Audit Scott Frank.

NSAA is a division of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers (NASACT). The organization works to bring state auditors together to cooperatively address government financial management issues. It produces webinars and other trainings to help auditors improve their skills and knowledge of financial, performance, IT security, and other types of audits.