East Central Reporter

The April 27 Legislative Audit Commission included several witnesses from Northern Illinois University who testified pertaining to a 2020 audit carried out on the university. Comments were directed to Lisa Freeman, president of Norther Illinois University.

In its 2020 audit, the Office of the Auditor General concluded that Northern Illinois University did not document mandated information technology risk assessments that were related to student information security. 

"When I see these repeat audit findings, the takeaway is whatever institution or state agency that is in front of us isn’t learning from its past mistakes and isn’t getting better," Sen. Chapin Rose said on April 27. "The last thing I’m going to say is this repeat audit finding that keeps coming up about universities for failure to document payroll, frankly, if everyone is required to fill out a payroll sheet to provide accountability for their time to taxpayers, then every state employee should be doing that. So, give us a list of the findings that don’t serve the common good and don’t put on that list that certain employees should be treated differently than other employees for the purpose of not turning in timesheets. That’s what accountability is all about."

The auditor general recommended the university perform and document risk assessments to solve the issue and to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to make sure it doesn’t occur again. Pertaining to internal controls over contracts, the office discovered that the university did not establish necessary internal controls over its contracts to make sure that they are approved prior to performance. The report noted that this finding has been replicated multiple times since 2012.

The audit uncovered that there were inadequate controls over I-9 forms and it recommended that the university improve its handle over that process.