Senior Compliance Analyst Clara Tang shared some of her time this month to talk with us about something that is important not only to her work but to all of us at UVA: internal controls.
Get the key points of our conversation below, and/or listen in to her talk it through* in the link above.
What is ARMICS?
ARMICS stands for Agency Risk Management and Internal Controls Standards, and this is a requirement for every state agency within the Commonwealth of Virginia. The AVP of Finance and the President of the University must sign off on ARMICs. As a part of ARMICS, we must certify our internal controls procedures once per year, and the survey we do as part of that is how many people across Grounds will encounter our work.
ARMICS stands for Agency Risk Management and Internal Controls Standards, and this is a requirement for every state agency within the Commonwealth of Virginia. The AVP of Finance and the President of the University must sign off on ARMICs. As a part of ARMICS, we must certify our internal controls procedures once per year, and the survey we do as part of that is how many people across Grounds will encounter our work.
What are Internal Controls?
Robust internal controls are a system that reduces risk and strengthens efficiency and effectiveness. Internal controls are kind of like an immune system --they keep us from catching some bad germs, but they also fight the germs we do happen to catch. Internal control can be preventive and detective. And nowadays, internal controls are always integrated into the business process and owned by the business process owners as well. With strong internal control, we can prevent things from going wrong or catch things after they have happened. It's not meant to be a punitive thing, but rather a way of continuously improving.
How do you interact with folks across Grounds?
We review processes in a multitude of functions, so we work with a lot of people. We want to work with teams across Grounds and improve their internal controls so mistakes won't impact their teams and the University. Reach out to us - we can help by reviewing business processes and identifying ways to do things differently so mistakes won't be made or will be caught earlier. Internal control always includes a cost/benefit analysis; its implementation should decrease mistakes and rework and improve efficiency.
* Clara notes that her bank account example is a preventive control, not a detective control, as stated in the interview.
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