Thursday, June 18, 2015

[Riverside] County CEO Responds to Unfavorable Grand Jury Report


The grand jury said the county's IT department did not meet the requirement to provide protection and mitigate security risks.


A critical grand jury report prompted Riverside County CEO Jay Orr to defend himself and his staff as having the “utmost consideration of the public trust.”
Orr’s statements were contained in a brief supplied Tuesday to the Board of Supervisors, which filed the comments in a silent 5-0 vote, electing not to address the jury’s findings -- or the executive officer’s take on them.
The 19-member civil grand jury in April submitted a negative evaluation of the IT department and its treatment of a 2014 internal audit conducted by the county auditor-controller’s office.
The audit examined operations related to IT’s Information Security Program, which focuses on protecting hardware, including network servers connecting multiple agencies.
At the conclusion of the audit last fall, county analysts determined that the IT department’s operating structure “did not provide reasonable assurance that county operational and reporting objectives related to assessing, accepting and mitigating information security risks ... were met.”
Auditor-Controller Paul Angulo noted that IT officials had verbally responded to the finding but “never provided a written response,” as required under two separate board policies.
According to the grand jury report, when jurors in January requested to see a copy of the IT department’s written response to the audit, they received nothing back but were instead informed that all future grand jury requests would need to be vetted by the Office of County Counsel.
The grand jury pointed to two provisions -- under California Penal Code sections 921 and 925 -- that guarantee unfettered access to public records.
Jurors further found fault with the interim head of the IT department, Chris Hans, and his boss, Orr, whom the grand jury said was not enforcing county policies mandating written responses to internal audits.
The jury submitted several recommendations, to which Orr and his staff responded, per the board’s direction.
As to jurors’ finding that the Department of Information Technology did not reply in writing to the auditor-controller in a timely manner, Orr and his staff attributed the delay to lack of a “permanent director,” with a vacancy at the helm following the resignation of former IT chief Kevin Crawford last August.
“The new director came aboard on May 4, 2015, and issued the written response on May 27,” the Executive Office wrote. “The submission was timely based upon the circumstances.”
Orr and his staff also took issue with the jury’s determination that the CEO was failing to do his job in enforcing board policies, as exemplified by the belated response to the audit.
“The grand jury has provided no legitimate basis for such an overly broad assertion,” according to the Executive Office. “They have based their conclusion on the late filing of one department.
“There are approximately 42 agencies of the county that are subject to audit. The executive officer and his staff take all of their responsibilities seriously and carry them out judiciously, with the utmost consideration of the public trust.”
Orr lastly objected to the jury’s perception of the county counsel’s request to vet document requests in advance as “interference,” saying the conclusion was “misguided and contrary to the county counsel’s ethical and statutory duties to its client.”
Temecula resident Paul Jacobs, a self-identified public watchdog and longtime critic of the IT department, denounced the Executive Office’s response to the grand jury as “defensive and disrespectful” in tone.
“The jury did due diligence. Their findings were accurate,” Jacobs told the board.
June 17, 2015
Lake Elsinore-Wildomar Patch
By Alexander Nguyen

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