REPORT DIGEST

ILLINOIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD

COMPLIANCE EXAMINATION
FOR THE YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 2021

Release Date:  June 16, 2022

FINDINGS THIS AUDIT:  1

FINDINGS LAST AUDIT: 7

State of Illinois, Office of the
Auditor General
FRANK J. MAUTINO, AUDITOR GENERAL

To obtain a copy of the Report
contact:
Office of the Auditor General, Iles
Park Plaza, 740 E. Ash Street,
Springfield, IL 62703
(217) 782-6046 or TTY (888) 261-2887

This Report Digest and Full Report are
also available on the worldwide web at
www.auditor.illinois.gov


DISCLAIMER

Because of the limitation on the scope
of our examination, as more fully
described in Finding 2021-001 of the
report, the scope of our work was not
sufficient to enable us to express,
and we do not express, an opinion on
whether the Board complied with the
specified requirements which comprise
a State compliance examination. The
Codification of Statements on
Standards for Attestation Engagements
(AT- C § 205.74) states a
“practitioner should DISCLAIM AN
OPINION when the practitioner is
unable to obtain sufficient
appropriate evidence on which to base
the opinion, and the practitioner
concludes that the possible effects on
the subject matter of undetected
misstatements, if any, could be both
material and pervasive.”  Since we
were unable to conduct testing we also
could not follow up on prior year
findings.

SYNOPSIS

• (21-01) The Board failed to maintain
electronic records of its activity
during Fiscal Year 2021.

FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND
RECOMMENDATIONS

FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ELECTRONIC RECORDS

The Board failed to maintain
electronic records of its activity
during Fiscal Year 2021.

On July 1, 2022, the Board’s
Information Technology (IT)
environment encountered a catastrophic
hardware failure, resulting in the
total loss of their IT environment,
applications, and data.  Further, the
Board had determined the backups of
their IT environment, applications,
and data had not been completed
successfully.  Therefore, the Board’s
IT environment, applications, and data
did not exist in order for the
accountants to conduct an examination
to determine the Board’s compliance
with the specified requirements as
described in the Audit Guide for
Financial Audits and Compliance
Attestation Engagements of Illinois
State Agencies. (Finding 1, page 9).

We recommended the Board continue to
work to restore their IT environment,
applications, and data.  In addition,
we recommend the Board ensure its
backups complete successfully.

Board officials agreed with the
finding and indicated the hardware
failure occurred during a City of
Springfield electrical power outage
while powering off and on the aged IT
infrastructure. Board IT staff have
implemented the following processes to
protect IT infrastructure and
electronic records during future power
outages, which includes the upcoming
installation of new servers and backup
equipment.

1. ICCB, through assistance from
vendor expertise, has documented the
best procedures and sequence for
taking down and bringing back up the
current systems to mitigate issues in
the event of a power failure. Several
unscheduled power outages have
occurred since July 2021 with Board IT
powering systems back on without issue
based on these established procedures.

2. ICCB has instituted a redundant
backup process where backups are
occurring under two separate solutions
and IT has compared each of the
backups being performed to ensure that
they are the same size, same data, and
contain data backed up on the same
date.

3. ICCB has purchased new servers and
will soon be transitioning to new
application servers/backup servers to
position ICCB appropriately with a
modern IT infrastructure in the event
of future power outages or hardware
failures. Moving from the current to
new systems will ensure resiliency and
strengthen current backup processes
further.

4. ICCB is in the process of acquiring
new backup hardware and software that
will be fully integrated with our new
and updated server environment.

Additionally, the Board is procuring
disaster data recovery services with a
vendor to assess, perform testing, and
recover records stored on the failed
hardware, which houses needed
electronic records lost from the power
outage.

ACCOUNTANT’S OPINION

The accountants conducted a State
compliance examination of the Board
for the year ended June 30, 2021, as
required by the Illinois State
Auditing Act.  The accountants were
unable to obtain sufficient
appropriate audit evidence to provide
a basis for an examination opinion on
whether the Board complied, in all
material respects, with the
requirements described in the report.

This State compliance examination was
conducted by the Office of the Auditor
General’s staff.

JANE CLARK
Division Director

This report is transmitted in
accordance with Section 3-14 of the
Illinois State Auditing Act.

FRANK J. MAUTINO
Auditor General

FJM:JAC