As reported in the Feb. 6 Gazette I agree that it should be fully up to council to define, hire and manage an internal auditor. Expecting the city manager or city staff to be involved in this process in any way would be like asking the “fox to guard the hen house.”
The internal auditor should be totally unbiased in its creation, selection, scope of its authority and have full unfiltered access to city information. The role of an internal auditor is not unique nor unusual, it is widely in practice in the federal government, many municipal governments and most large corporations. As a taxpayer, I support the role for St. Albert.
In response to council’s comments that “they are not sure how we get this moving forward,” I respectfully offer the following suggestion. A quick Google search provides links to several municipalities that already have this role in place. Those links provide excellent scope of responsibility documents that could easily be modified to meet council’s expectations. A modified document could be provided to any one of the many excellent executive recruitment companies, which could provide a shortlist of qualified candidates for council to consider and hire.
This approach would save the city considerable time and money. The budget to do just the business case is $200,000 with hiring in late 2016. I believe realistically, using existing information available on the web, this position could be hired and operational this year for significantly less than the budget to do just the business case. I hope this simple business approach helps move this forward.
Mike Killick, St. Albert
