REPORT DIGEST

ILLINOIS STUDENT ASSISTANCE COMMISSION
-  ILLINOIS PREPAID TUITION PROGRAM

FINANCIAL AUDIT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 2021

Release Date:  June 8, 2022

FINDINGS THIS AUDIT:  1

CATEGORY:  NEW -- REPEAT – TOTAL
Category 1:  0 -- 1 -- 1
Category 2:  0 -- 0 -- 0
Category 3:  0 -- 0 -- 0
TOTAL:  0 -- 1 -- 1

FINDINGS LAST AUDIT: 2

Category 1: Findings that are material
weaknesses in internal control and/or
a qualification on compliance with
State laws and regulations (material
noncompliance).
Category 2: Findings that are
significant deficiencies in internal
control and noncompliance with State
laws and regulations.
Category 3: Findings that have no
internal control issues but are in
noncompliance with State laws and
regulations.

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

SYNOPSIS

• (21-01) The Department had
weaknesses in internal control over
reporting its census data and did not
have a reconciliation process to
provide assurance census data
submitted to its pension and other
postemployment benefits (OPEB) plans
was complete and accurate.
FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND
RECOMMENDATIONS

WEAKNESSES IN INTERNAL CONTROLS OVER
CENSUS DATA

The Department had weaknesses in
internal control over reporting its
census data and did not have a
reconciliation process to provide
assurance census data submitted to its
pension and other postemployment
benefits (OPEB) plans was complete and
accurate.

During testing, we noted the
following:

• The Department had not performed an
initial complete reconciliation of its
census data recorded by the State
Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) to
its internal records to establish a
base year of complete and accurate
census data.
• After establishing a base year, the
Department had not developed a process
to annually obtain from SERS the
incremental changes recorded by SERS
in its census data records and
reconcile these changes back to the
Department’s internal supporting
records.
• In addition, we noted errors within
the Department of Central Management
Services (CMS) allocation of OPEB-
related balances across the State’s
funds, public universities, and the
Illinois State Toll Highway Authority
related to a failure by CMS to account
for a separately financed specific
OPEB liability for certain groups of
employees at one component unit of the
State.  The impact of these errors
resulted in the Department restating
its beginning net position to decrease
by $59,537,000 as of July 1, 2020.
• Based on our analysis of
transactions reported by the
Department to SERS during the census
data accumulation period throughout
Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020, we noted
one of 60 (2%) employees subjected to
census data testing had an incorrect
deduction code being applied each pay
period.  (Finding 1, pages 64-66)

We recommended the Department work
with SERS to annually reconcile its
active members’ census data from its
underlying records to a report of
census data submitted to SERS’ actuary
and CMS’ actuary and after completing
an initial full reconciliation, the
Department may limit the annual
reconciliations to focus on the
incremental changes to the census data
field from the prior actuarial
valuation, provided no risks are
identified that incomplete or
inaccurate reporting of census data
may have occurred during prior
periods.  We further recommended any
errors identified during this process
should be promptly corrected by either
the Department or SERS, with the
impact of these errors communicated to
both SERS’ actuary and CMS’ actuary
and implement controls to ensure
census data events are timely and
accurately reported to SERS.

The Department agreed with the
recommendation and stated it worked
with SERS to complete an initial full
reconciliation. The Department further
stated it will work with SERS annually
to complete reconciliations focusing
on the incremental changes to the
census datafile from the prior
actuarial valuation, and the
Department has evaluated internal
controls over this process and revised
its written procedures to ensure
census data reporting to SERS will be
completed timely, accurately, and in a
consistent manner.

We will review the Department’s
progress towards the implementation of
our recommendation in our next
financial audit.

AUDITOR’S OPINION(S)

The auditors stated the financial
statements of the Department as of and
for the years ended June 30, 2021are
fairly stated in all material
respects.

This financial audit was conducted by
RSM US LLP.


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:jv