Executive Summary
For Immediate Release: October 4, 2007
Contact: Harvey M. Rice
215-686-6696
Butkovitz Releases Audit of Mainstay Database System for the Office of Behavioral Health
(Philadelphia)— City Controller Alan Butkovitz today released his audit of the Office of Behavioral Health/Mental Retardation Services’ (OBH/MRS) Mainstay Database System.
The Mainstay Database System’s function is to manage the setup, approval and tracking of grants to agencies and their programs. It is primarily a record keeping system and is not responsible for the release of City funds to the various agencies and programs. The audit identified several potential internal control weaknesses. These include; the security and the sharing of passwords, not properly securing the system to prevent unauthorized changes to the records or the entire database, not formally documenting backup and recovery procedures and schedules, and weaknesses in various supporting documentation for changes to the system.
Butkovitz stated, “While we identified several control weaknesses, it appears that OBH/MRS has implemented sufficient information technology and application controls both manual and automated that provide reasonable assurance that the completeness, accuracy and integrity of the information is maintained or can be restored timely and the Mainstay System is not compromised. However, I would urge the Office of Behavioral Health/Mental Retardation Services to implement our recommendations to correct these weaknesses.”
“I would further recommend that OBH/MRS perform a cost to benefit analysis before implementing controls to remediate the observations included within this report”, Butkovitz said.
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