Here in Washington, local leaders go by many names – Councilmember, Commissioner, Mayor and many more. Regardless of your title or the size of your local government, leadership plays a key role in ensuring your government’s cybersecurity success. Fortunately, our Center for Government Innovation has updated its cybersecurity guide for Washington’s leaders.
Since 2016, Washington’s governments have reported more than $37 million of lost public funds as a result of cyberfraud, sometimes referred to as phishing, spearfishing or business email compromise schemes. In these schemes, an external threat actor contacts the government, appearing to be a known source such as an employee, upper-level manager, vendor or other business associate. Government staff are convinced to redirect valid payments to the external threat actor, or to purchase gift cards and provide them with the card numbers.
The Office of the Washington State Auditor has investigated many losses of public funds that governments could have detected sooner – if only someone had looked at their bank statements. Whether you are a finance professional, a department head, or even an elected or appointed official, regularly reviewing your monthly statements can greatly increase the odds of deterring and detecting fraud.
Whether from yearbook sales, prom tickets or direct donations, the money raised by Associated Student Body (ASB) groups are public funds.
The Washington Association of School Business Officials (WASBO) is hosting its annual conference this week in Spokane and SAO representatives will be there in person, sharing the latest news on financial reporting and auditing issues specifically for schools
Originally published October 2, 2024
Updated October 4, 2024
Originally published September 4, 2024
June 27, 2025
This blog post was originally published in September 2024. We've recently updated the It Starts with Policy Guide for the 2025 reporting year. You can find the new guide in SAO’s Resource Library. We've also updated the links in this post for your convenience.
What’s new?
We've added recommended policy guidance for AI use.
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Most governments own a variety of assets that they track and inventory, beyond what they do for financial reporting purposes. We call them small and attractive assets here in Washington state, but across the nation, people refer to them as theft-sensitive assets, walk-away assets or controlled assets.
Whether you're a new school official looking to learn all you can, or a seasoned veteran just interested in a refresher or two, chances are we have some resources you can use. Here's a list of linked articles, tools and checklists that have proven quite useful over the years. As always, if you have questions or need more information, contact our Center for Government Innovation at Center@sao.wa.gov.
How long has it been since your government evaluated its credit card program? Was it when we published our original best practice resource in July 2019, just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?