Posted at Thursday, July 27, 2006  EDT  

N.S. auditor demands tighter computer security

Canadian Press

HALIFAX — A few simple changes to computerized systems could stop would-be thieves from stealing from the Nova Scotia government, the province's auditor general said Wednesday.

Jacques Lapointe said government has done little to protect software from being hacked into by dishonest bureaucrats, despite repeated warnings from his agency.

Though he gave no examples of fraud from audits of the Department of Community Services or the Finance Department's accounting system, Lapointe said there's "a potential and a high risk."

"People can be tempted to go in there and commit fraud," he said, noting there were numerous ways to get into public accounts.

For instance, he said that once again auditors are finding departments where people who've left their jobs still have computer passwords.

In the Department of Community Services, a review of 17 former employees revealed that nine still had passwords that could be used.

The department also hadn't brought in simple software that could review electronic transfers of welfare payments into bank accounts.

Without the on-line checks, there's little to prevent inaccurate overpayments, the report said.

People are also able to cut themselves cheques and cover their tracks in accounting records, Lapointe alleged.

Community Services responded by saying it plans to act on the recommendations, while noting some changes would best be left until there's a wider overhaul of its computer system.

Karen White, a department spokeswoman, said by January 2007 technology upgrades will carry out the checks on electronic transfers that the auditor recommends.

"Our new technology will provide additional checks and balances," she said.

In addition, the department will bring in policies to ensure the information technology division is informed when employees leave or change their status.

But Lapointe said the process has been taking too long, even though previous audits have warned of the problem.

"The speed of reaction to these has not been great, and I'm concerned that similar problems seem to continue to be brought up over and over again," he said.

The auditor, who has only been in the job since March 1, noted other recurring problems in the management of the province's affairs.

For example, the auditor repeated a request for the province to explain why there are 21,000 more people with health cards than the total population of the province.

"There is a risk that some of the registered beneficiaries may be ineligible," he writes, though he doesn't cite any examples of abuse of the cards.

He also said the province needs to tighten up the control of school-based funds of money raised by parents, students and teachers.

During a review of the Strait Regional School Board, the auditors found irregularities in how records were being kept on the funds, and little monitoring of how they're spent by school principals.

In his opening chapter, Lapointe notes that senior accountants in the Department of Finance need to provide more data on user fee revenues, or he can't sign off on the province's estimates.

"The difficulty we had was in getting any information to review," he said.

The report notes a similar lack of regular, comprehensive public reporting on the state of forests in Nova Scotia.

The report states there's been concern about whether the province will have a sustainable supply of timber from private lands — yet the department hasn't been providing public reports on the issue.

Opposition parties said the auditor's report is showing the Tory minority government hasn't been pushing hard enough to make needed changes.

"The government has been characterized in recent years by a lot of drift, and it shows up every year when the auditor general sends in his reports," said NDP finance critic Howard Epstein.