Good morning.

My name's David Reynolds.

I'm the chairman of the Indianapolis Marion County Audit Committee.

And I welcome everyone to the October 2025 Indianapolis Marion County Audit Committee.

First order of business would be introduction of the committee members and members of the audience.

So I'll start to my left with Councillor Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Michael Paul Hart representing District 20.

We'll share a mic.

Mike Clater, just a member.

Tanya Anjai, the organizer.

Good morning, everyone.

Craig Anisuchigadza member.

Candace Harris, City Council CFO.

Abby Hanson Controller.

Wesley Jones, Director of the Office of Audit Performance.

Vivian Agnew, Deputy Director of the Office of Audit and Performance.

Thank you.

It has been our practice because most of our audience is staff members and participants in the audit committee.

So if we could go ahead to the audience and introduce yourself, please.

Amanda Mitchell, Senior Manager at Foreign Business IS.

Rick Whitman with Forest Bazours.

Caitlin Edwards, Manager of Performance and Innovation with the Office of Audit and Performance.

James Priester Auditor.

Emily Browns will reach reporting analysts for the much.

So I would ask committee members to review those.

They were sent out in advance a few days ago.

Any questions or edits on the minutes?

Move approval.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any other discussion.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Opposed the same.

All right.

The minutes of our July meeting have been approved.

I'll draw the committee's attention to the proposed dates for 2026.

They are March 13th at 9 a.m.

Um July 31st at 9 a.m.

and October 30th at 9 a.m.

All of those are on a Friday.

So if there's issues with any of those dates, please uh contact Director Jones and we can talk through that to make sure that we have quorums for each of our three meetings in 2026.

With that, I'm going to turn the balance of the um meeting over to Director Jones to walk us through the rest of the agenda.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Good morning, everyone.

Good to be with you as always.

Seeing as this is our last meeting of the year, you're gonna get a lot of OAP FaceTime.

Um so uh usually you know with the last meeting of the year we like to kind of do a bit of a wrap-up and kind of a state of affairs of how things are from an audit and risk standpoint.

Um, and we usually have some speakers.

We have a couple presentations that I'll be doing on behalf of both ISA and uh the OFM risk management branch.

They were unable to be here today.

Um but I want you as we go through these to kind of think of them as part of the our entire kind of risk landscape.

Our team is of a certain size, of course, and we need to rely on our our colleagues and other agencies and departments to help cover the risk landscape.

And so hopefully this will give you a bit of an insight on kind of what else is going on in some of the collaboration that our office does with some of our our colleagues.

So with that being said, of course, speak up if you have any questions.

Uh I'm pretty familiar with a lot of this stuff, but if there's anything we need to follow up on, we can we can obviously do that.

Uh the first part uh we wanted to run through this morning is um the OFM's kind of risk management and safety um update for kind of 2025.

This unit is kind of traditionally more focused on operational risk, which is an area that we're not as involved in, but still has a lot of impacts on our our risk environment overall.

So thanks to our risk administrator Esther Stonecipher for preparing these slides, and she's been doing a great job in this area.

So their 2025 priorities in terms of risk management and safety.

Workers' comp data and reporting is something that remains at the forefront and making sure those facts and figures are accurate.

Motor vehicle accident tracking is also another difficult area that they've they've had to challenge with city county vehicles and motor vehicle accidents, getting the data.

One, just being aware of when an accident happens so that the process can play out as it should.

Consistently working to improve that.

They've also undertaken some insurance education and business continuity planning.

There'll be a little bit more on that later on.

From a safety standpoint, we had our first and I don't know how long, at least the first probably since I've been here, City County Building Occupant Emergency Plan and Evacuation Drill specifically that was held back in September.

And she's got some stats on that later on.

They also completed an OSHA training and have offered a defensive driving training for those city-county employees that are on the road regularly as part of their job duties.

Looking more at workers' compensation data and reporting, there is a monthly newsletter that you can subscribe to that's sent out by Emory Robinson, our safety manager.

The topics include injury and cost data, the top five workplace injuries, total costs paid by department, cost to budget comparison, upcoming safety trainings and announcements.

So you can see some of the stats here.

It's a little hard to see probably for some of you, but you can we can send you out the presentations you can see it.

Um looks like for the city here to date, we have about 5.9 million in workers' compensation paid for the county.

It's about 582,000.

Um, and this is again with their focus on operational risk.

It's an ongoing uh concern for them to make sure we do everything we can to minimize risks in the workplace and thus reduce those costs.

The workers' cost data is something that we take into consideration in our annual risk assessment, um, and we're continuing to revise that, and you'll hear more about that kind of as we get into the OAP specific presentation.

More vehicle tracking, they have a new risk management software with origami risk, which helps with revenue recovery recovery and accident reporting and claims management.

Again, there's we have so many vehicles on the road, there's a lot of risk out there, and it's been a challenge for them to kind of keep a handle on those those matters, but this is helping to keep things in line.

Uh they do now have reporting access from web and mobile devices and QR codes.

It's got easy integration with IMPD crash reports and fleet management repair estimates, and it also allows for various data visualizations and reporting options.

Um I think that's keeping in line with the theme that we've seen across the enterprise is using technology and software to help make our jobs easier.

I know our office has done a lot and continues to investigate tools to make that a reality, and and OFM RISC is also doing the same here.

For insurance education and business continuity planning, there they have a guide for contracts and also are involved with insurance waivers for entering into contractual agreements about when waivers apply and when they don't.

They're always welcome to take take questions from a business continuity standpoint.

There is a template now that they have available for agencies and departments, and also have access to FEMA's continuity planning resources.

Um there is a process that they're happy to walk through, and so we encourage any agencies and departments that are interested in doing that to do so.

COVID, of course, sent us partly down that path of finding ways to continue to do operations when things are disrupted in a major way, and but I still still think there's a lot of ways we can continue to evolve that, just giving that the you know the number of risks that uh exist in the world.

So the city county building uh emergency plan and evacuation drill.

Um they worked together and partnered with uh the sheriff's office who is in charge of security for the building and building authority as the owners of the building.

That drill, like as I mentioned, was September 26th.

So some of the stats from that day, there were 362 people evacuated.

The average time to evacuate a floor was nine minutes and 45 seconds, and the total drill took just under uh 28 minutes.

All the feedback I've heard from them was that it went smoothly.

Um it may not have been a full full house of the building, but uh I think they were pretty pleased with the results given the changes that have taken place and restacking of floors and the like.

Some safety trainings that have also gone on.

Um the OSHA training, they gave six classes this year with a total of 87 people trained.

Uh you can see the agencies that were represented, so kind of a large portion of county agencies but also some city agencies.

And they also responded to two state OSHA non-formal response complaints.

For the defensive driving class, 2550, sorry, 205 people completed the training across BC BNS, Animal Care Services, Fire Department, and the Surveyor's Office.

They've also completed seven safety walkthroughs with various departments.

And as always, they are welcome to help with any questions that might arise for department specific needs.

Looking forward to some upcoming projects that they have.

So that will be forthcoming.

Is there anything you want to share on that about kind of I guess it's not our report to share, so we should probably wait for them to do that.

But that we're excited that they're doing that.

They collaborated with us.

And again, the theme on this, I think, is better collaboration across city-county agencies and departments because we all cover some of the same things just in different uh ways.

So they're also working on an insurance guide for vendors, I think which will be helpful and smooth out that contractual uh process.

Some additional uh revisions to the safety handbook are forthcoming, and then uh more information on kind of workers' comp and injury prevention.

That again is a an ongoing concern.

I believe this does it for the OFM risk side.

Are there any questions kind of about this area?

Seeing none, I'll move on to ISA and cybersecurity.

This one is also critically important for all the obvious reasons.

Personally, within our office, we don't have a specific IT expertise, and so we rely on ISA as does the rest of the enterprise to make sure our cybersecurity is kind of up to par and we are you know taking all the necessary steps to keep our enterprise and data and information safe.

So some of their priorities throughout 2025.

Um they've done a great job with a fishing awareness campaign.

If you're a city county employee, you're very aware of this.

The amount of chatter I've heard with folks now, any sort of suspicious email the uh in previous years, you wouldn't hear, you know, it wasn't a topic of discussion, but now they've done such a great job with these fishing tests that people are almost deathly afraid to click on anything that they don't work recognize or from someone, which is good, which is good.

Um we want that.

So some of the stats uh and figures from that, again, these are not specific but general twin trends, uh is that the click rate on these tests continues to go downward.

Um these links in here link to some of the information they have on their SharePoint site, which is on our internet for those that have access.

Um, City County is actually outperforming kind of industry averages for government in terms of compliance and and uh ability to avoid those pitfalls, and education and remedial training goes on.

So, one of the unique factors that they've added is if you do in fact click on one of the tests, it obviously notifies you that it was a test and you you failed.

Uh but shortly thereafter, within a day or so, you're actually prompted to do a remedial training about the red flags for fishing and fishing uh attempts.

We get a number of them across the enterprise daily, uh, quite a large number actually.

Uh I am not ashamed to admit that I had a perfect record going into September.

Uh I was looking at email on my phone and it was late on a Friday, and one got me.

And so I was uh in the the bucket that had to uh had to uh find some readal training.

But the the stats overall on that are encouraging, and they'll continue that campaign kind of going forward.

I will also say that our office is performing very well, my performance notwithstanding.

Uh they've also done some emergency situations and exercises similar to the OFM risk group.

Um, this helps agencies identify risk and test the responses within emergencies.

They've done some tabletop exercises and live drills.

Um they their goal when they do these is to be to do them across the hierarchy of the agency.

Those so they start with leadership and let it filter down to the rest of the group.

And those have been successful so far.

With today being the 31st, it's the last day of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and they have been a great done a great job of providing weekly updates and educational resources, additional training, some required, some not.

That again overall will raise the level of cybersecurity awareness across the enterprise.

And uh, again, there's some more details in that on the internet site that can be accessed.

Some ongoing projects that they have are adding multi-factor authentication for certain applications, widely known as a security cybersecurity best practice, but there's some applications that we have that don't have it, so they're working to add that.

Widely known as a security cybersecurity best practice, but there's some applications that we have that don't have it, so they're working to add that.

A continued focus on training, specifically a training for onboarding, the remediation that I enter I answered, or I mentioned when those uh you know kind of get tripped up by the by the tests, and then they're also having an annual enterprise-wide training that um is required of everyone within the enterprise.

Another project deals with data data protection, um, which our office and specifically the performance and innovation team has had some consultation and involvement with.

Uh, they're working to add sensitivity labels to data files so that you kind of know the sensitivity with it, and uh eventually are working towards having email encryption based on that.

So if data is tagged as sensitive, it'll ensure that the email, if it's sent via email, that email will be encrypted.

Uh, there is a training also and and more efforts to make the data classification more aware within the city county enterprise, and also coming soon will be the data roadmap, um, which will be shared on uh SharePoint, which is their overall data, ISA's overall data strategy uh for where they want to go over the next next few years.

In terms of enterprise collaboration, this is specifically kind of where our office interacts with them.

I being in my chair sit both on one of the IT functional groups as well as the IT Cybersecurity Meeting Committee.

Both of those groups meet on a quarterly basis uh with a little bit different aims and goals.

Um I can't remember the exact number, but there are a number of uh functional groups based on work type.

So admin and finance is where we fall, and it's comprised of OFM, OAP, the Treasurer's Office, and the Auditor's Office.

The IT cybersecurity is is kind of a step up from there and has a lot more uh involvement from other agencies and departments and really digs into some of the details of the threats that we're facing, some of the plans to address those, and also any kind of agency kind of specific needs that arise from a cybersecurity standpoint.

So while we don't have this expertise specifically in our office, we are very confident in our leadership between Colin Hill and Nicole Heatley Holmes, who's our chief information security officer, and their efforts to kind of keep the enterprise safe.

Where there are overlaps and things we can collaborate on, we try to do so at every opportunity.

Uh but we remain plugged in and kind of aware of the risk from an IT standpoint and cybersecurity standpoint through this involvement with them.

Any questions on those things?

Yes, Counselor Hart.

Council Hart.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, uh Director Jones.

Um, just warning.

Uh Director Hill walked in as soon as you said you failed your phishing test.

Uh he did.

He knew I told him right away.

I was so embarrassed.

I had a perfect record going.

Uh just the one thing I wanted to bring up, and I and I've I've sent a message out to uh Director Hill about it, uh, which is you know, it it's coming up in my world a lot, which is 508 compliance, which is an ADA compliance uh from the federal government that requires uh you know a lot of our PDFs and online images and things to be tagged and things of that nature.

Just prudent for uh, you know, probably the your your office more than anything, at least to be aware of it.

Um there's a deadline, I think in 2026.

I'm not sure the exact date, but uh organizations, municipal organizations, cities, towns that are uh greater than 50,000 population have to be compliant by that time.

So again, I know Director Hill's working on it, they're going through the process, but just something I wanted to put on your radar.

I appreciate that.

That's uh something I wasn't aware of.

It's all right.

So we have a nice diverse board.

Absolutely.

Anything else?

All good, great.

All right, with that, I will transition back to our kind of regular presentation.

Again, keeping in that theme of kind of a state of affairs.

I wanted the committee to have kind of a little deeper dive.

I know each meeting we kind of touch on what we do, and I try to truncate it because we have other business to deal with, but since we had a little extra time today, I wanted to give uh some of our staff an opportunity to kind of present a little more in depth what they're doing on both the audit and the performance and event and innovation side.

Uh, and so this next part will uh be our managers of both those units giving some details on specific activities they completed throughout 2025.

So I believe first up is audit, and our audit manager Heather Jones will kind of walk you through some of the uh details of our cash count and limited cash control review procedures.

Of course.

Good morning, everybody.

As we said, my name is Heather Jones.

I'm the audit manager for the OAP.

And today we just wanted to kind of give you a little bit of a deeper dive, like Wes said, into the cash counts specifically.

So first off, as you probably all already know, the City County internal control policy was developed in order to satisfy the SBOA state regulations and our cash counts as well as the City County internal control policy are kind of formatted in the same way based on the same 17 key principles of internal controls.

However, specifically principle 10 is where you will find the actual internal control policies as well as the five activities specifically related to payroll, disbursement, receiping, cash, and credit card transactions.

Within principal 10, it outlines the specific internal control details for each one of these activities.

And so in order to evaluate that compliance, the OAP has established seven objectives that directly tie back to those three activities.

And just a side note, these objectives and the city-county internal controls policy, we distribute them annually, usually in January to all of the city-county CFOs.

So that way everybody is made aware of all of this each year.

So as I've got listed on the screen here, the seven objectives, I won't read through every single one of them.

But our cash count is designed, all of the testing that we do is designed to answer and address these seven seven objectives and determine if the agency we're reviewing is in compliance with these seven objectives.

So when we actually go in, we physically verify the cash on hand.

So we'll compare the date of the receipts to the date of the deposit.

We look at who actually issued the receipts, who prepared the deposit, who took the deposit to the bank, who processed the void or refund if there are any, because we're really looking for that segregation of duties between all of those different different parts of the process.

And but we also ask for updated ones once we're there.

And we incorporate those SOPs into our testing to make sure that if you guys say you're doing it one way, then we make sure that you're doing it that way.

Once we get to the end, of course, we have the report.

So that way we can make sure that you know these issues aren't reoccurring every year.

And so then the last slide that I have is just some of the issues that we've seen kind of throughout multiple agencies that we've done these cash count reviews for.

So the first one is related to objective one.

That's the financial records accurately representing cash and checks on hand.

We've seen some minor errors in this area.

Honestly, we attribute most of that to just human error.

We all make mistakes, we transpose a number, we write down the wrong year, things like that.

So a lot of the agencies that we've identified these mistakes in, they have implemented new review processes where there's a second set of eyes just doing a review and signing off to kind of help eliminate as many mistakes as possible.

Then for both for objective two, it's the timely deposit of funds, and objective four is the segregation of duties.

Or it's some it's hard for multiple people to be able to come in and issue the receipts, but then have another person do the deposit and another person do the reconciliation.

So we've had some agencies get a little creative in developing you know some workarounds for that where they'll bring in another person maybe from a different department to come and help them.

Um or you know, there's also a lot of agencies who feel like the risk involved with not having that second signature or not having that second uh person to take the bank, take the money to the bank is a minimal risk that they're willing to eat basically according to their risk appetite.

So we've seen that across our cash counts, and then the last issue is just the development implementation of SOPs.

Um a lot of times we see agencies that have SOPs, but they're specifically related to cash handling is um what I'm talking about.

But a lot of times they're outdated.

There's new people, there's new processes, there's new systems in place, and the SOPs just haven't been updated to kind of reflect the new processes and the new people in place.

Um you know that has been a pretty easy fix.

The agencies have just updated their SOPs, or you know, we've worked with a couple agencies to and connected a couple of agencies together to develop some SOPs that would work best in their departments.

So I know this year I didn't do a slide for this, but I started to and then I changed my mind.

Um this year, our goal was to perform nine cash counts, and I think by the end of the year, we will have done six cash counts.

Um, which we haven't gone through our OAP administrative update yet, but we are down our senior auditor right now, so you know, just with some of the staffing changes, our goal had to be cut back a little bit.

Um so I think we're making good progress.

We've seen a lot of improvement with the agencies that we have performed cash counts.

Everybody is you know on board with being in compliance and doing everything they can if there are issues identified, you know, to make sure that it doesn't happen again in the future.

Um, but I think that wraps it up for me.

I don't know if anybody has any questions or concerns they wanted to go over.

Yeah, I I do have a couple of questions to start off, and these may these may be unfair questions, so if they're unfair, please say they're unfair and but do you have an idea of kind of the magnitude of the cash um that the city collects on either an annual basis or monthly basis?

I mean, what what are we I mean because you can envision at least I'm envisioning as you're talking about you know the child coming into the park to do some craft with a you know with three dollars compared to the treasurer accepting cash for a property tax payment?

So I'd recognize there's a but I just did wasn't sure, and my second question is is that declining the amount of cash that is exchanging hands?

Is that declining over time, or is it I can't do that?

So that's what I'm saying.

These may be unfair questions for you.

I definitely can't answer the second part um because I have only been here for a little over a year now, so I don't know about the decline.

Um but I can say that it is very much like you kind of pointed out the different DPR, they take minimal doll dollars a day.

I mean, like I think some of the times for that we reviewed it was anywhere between five and twenty dollars a day, and then maybe they'll have a big day because they've rented out a shelter house or they have uh an event happening, so they'll get some more cash there.

The DPR is also very uh focused on you know, community and allowing some of the uh community to access the parks for little to no cost.

So their goal is to kind of keep their cash down a little bit because they're just trying to get you know safe place for kids to come and hang out and do basket have play basketball at the end of the day.

So um, but yeah, the treasurer's office is obviously a greater dollar amount, um, but you can see in the treasurer's office too that they take exponentially more checks.

So they you know, they might have a few hundred dollars in cash, but then bulk of their receipts are checks or credit cards.

There's a lot of credit cards too, but we don't even look at those.

So I think the risk with the credit cards is minimal as far as cash handling procedures go.

So that's why we've chosen not to kind of dive into that.

Um I don't know, Leslie.

That's uh it's not something we looked at and about how we select that's probably a new layer that we could add in terms of ranking priority and need for those that do accept cash because the range varies so much, but no, that's not something we've we've done traditionally.

I also don't know about the trends over time.

I don't know if our steam controller could could comment on that at all.

I'll be impressed if she can it's anecdote, it's not necessarily fact, but I do think it's going down.

My I mean from what I'm what they expect.

Yeah, when I started here eight years ago, I mean, we didn't have the ability to make online bill pay like that, those abilities and in the places where there are a lot more services you can do online bill pay.

So I would expect cash handling check handling is going down significantly.

And and actually my third question, and and you raised it was um credit card or online payments, and and you said through your process you you don't look at that.

Right.

But I guess I would direct this more to Director Jones, then I mean I'm I'm not sure why.

I mean, are we is there some process to make sure that the you know they can make airs too?

Okay, so is there some process in place where we are actually reviewing those transactions to make sure that we are timely getting those payments as well?

Yeah, that's a great uh suggestion.

That's something again.

We haven't, I think historically looked at that's just been focused on the cash, but we that's something we can look into to see if there's another way to kind of double check those transactions and make sure the accuracy of those is complete.

Other questions?

Oh, Jenna.

If you don't mind, I could add an um so there are uh daily reconciliation processes that are happening with every credit card payment that's coming in um across the city-county enterprise uh you know, depending on um who's making the payment, um, if it's online or if somebody's actually going to an office and making a payment, um, but there are reconciliation processes that are happening.

Um now what OAP would do, right, is come come in and then make sure that those reconciliation processes are working correctly and that there's you know very little variances and so forth.

But I just wanted to let you know that that that is a daily reconciliation process.

Thank you.

Other questions from committee members?

Yes.

Hello.

Hi so I know you mentioned that your goal was to complete six or nine uh cash review audits and you're at six.

How many agencies actually collect cash?

Oh, I'd have to go back to my spreadsheet.

I don't have it off the top of my head, but um agencies.

I wanna say it's gone down a lot.

Um there's it's just the handful of things.

Yeah, yeah, we can get you the exact number.

I think we have like 40 or 50 like locations.

Yeah, so we break it down by individual locations.

So obviously parks has multiple locations that collect cash in terms of agencies.

My guts in the eight to ten range.

Yeah.

Um in terms of age of school, we can get you that exact number based on what our listing is.

Yeah, I have a spreadsheet on my computer.

I just don't have it here.

So the goal is to reach nine, your goal was to reach nine locations versus it be like nine agencies.

So but do you have a goal to of all the agencies that you at least touch a certain amount within a period of a couple years?

Or can you speak to that a little bit?

Um so we every year we at the beginning of the year we do our plan um in that is based on the risk assessment, it's based on um some interviews that we have with folks around the city county, and we also look at when the last time a cash count was performed.

So we try to make sure that each location is getting counted at least once, like every three years.

So at least that's I know because up until the last maybe two years, I think, the agency has not had a very um or has been short audit staff.

There's literally been one audit team member to do all of the things that audit needs to do.

Um so just within the last year to two years, have we really been even able to get our focus back on the cash counts and doing them more regularly um and more thoroughly?

So if that answers your question.

And if we get that volume data, that can play into it too.

Again, we have limited resources, so we're trying to deploy them.

Yeah, but we do look at we're not picking all parks locations, right?

But having that volume data in addition to the last date of cash cap review, the number of agencies, we can kind of try to make sure we have the best coverage we can uh and and maximize that.

So it isn't part of our consideration for selection.

Yes.

Sorry to drag this on, but I thought of two more questions.

Um and you mentioned the parks where you know they they run a program and they may collect 20 dollars for an evening.

Is there a re is there a requirement, either city or state that that 20 dollars is deposited the next day?

Yes.

It is a is that a state requirement?

Requirement.

Okay.

There are a tiny caveat.

It seems a little that seems a little little much, but okay.

There is a caveat um in the state regulations that says they do not have to take the deposit until it reaches $500.

Oh, okay.

That's that's what I was gonna.

I wondered if there was some it applies to certain locations or certain parts of the government only, is my understanding.

But yeah, that comes into play when we do our testing as well.

We will we don't count it as not timely if it hadn't reached that $500 limit.

Okay, and then my second question probably pertains really probably only to the treasurer's office and the collection of property taxes, but is there ongoing any discussions about Bitcoin and any sort of um payments of property tax that way?

That's definitely over my head.

I don't have the answer.

Not to my knowledge, uh given the fact that we're still trying to get electronic payments in certain areas, certain areas.

Uh no, I haven't heard any discussion about that in terms of alternative currencies.

Other questions?

No.

Okay, well thank you.

I will pass it over.

I believe uh Caitlin, our performance manager is uh next.

Good morning.

Not sure I have anything as exciting as Bitcoin, but I think it's exciting.

So welcome.

This morning I'm going to talk a lot about what the performance team has done and our efforts, and a lot of that revolves around training.

So you may be familiar, especially if you've been on this committee for a while, that our bread and butter is indie performs.

That is a data literacy and a data class that teaches city county staff how to use data to make informed decisions.

So ultimately, when you go through our class, you learn about good data practices and how to visualize that data so you can start to get those insights.

This year we actually increased our cross collaboration awareness with ISA specifically.

We integrated the ISA data classification policy and all their new strategies into our curriculum so we can really try to align.

As well as uh we saw great successes in our participants making internal dashboards.

So what I mean by a dashboard is they take their data, their raw numbers, they add context to that, so there's actually information that we can glean, and then they create visualizations, charts, graphs, and the like.

This is actually a dashboard that we created regarding our participants.

So you'll see here I have sort of all indie performs data by the numbers.

It looks like it doesn't want to load.

So you'll see here of all time, since we've been teaching this course since 2022 in several iterations, how much uh how many participants from each agency have participated and successfully completed the course, in addition to how many training hours each of those departments have committed to do so.

Um, of course, some of the context, which I already mentioned, would include things like certain agencies are larger, they just have a lot more staff, so there's a lot more opportunity for them to join the course.

But I find this really exciting.

If we zoom in just on this year, we can see that we've had 46 participants, and that's across 17 different agencies to participate in Indie Performs.

Um, and in order to complete the course, you do have to create a visualization with your data.

And so we're talking about 46 staff who've taken the initiative to sign up for this course to improve their work, which I find quite exciting.

Here, if we just wanted to see that by the numbers, um, and you can see this is an exactly a dashboard or an example of a dashboard that one of our students might create.

Uh, we're able to zoom in.

Perhaps I want to look at just the Department of Public Works and all of these different visualizations, update, so I can zoom in and get greater insights from that data.

I can see that DPW has uh almost 500 training hours over the lifetime of this course being offered, and we've had nearly 30 people participate.

Um, DPW, as you can imagine, is a great pool with very rich data, and so that's been exciting to see.

So that's just a little taster.

I know seeing dashboards is maybe not something you folks get to do every day, so I wanted to have the opportunity to show that to you today, and I'll dive back in here.

Maybe locate where we were at.

You can go back to the PDF.

Oh, is it a PDF?

I apologize.

Okay, sorry about that.

Um, so it's it's quite exciting.

Um, in addition to the leaderboard to just show you what our spread is, what our reach is, how many uh people we've touched, and the progress that we've made this year.

We also solicit feedback, those are via anonymous surveys from all our participants, and we do that after every session and annually we review that feedback.

Uh, in general, the feedback is pretty positive, but we have leveraged that feedback to improve our course annually.

So uh folks ask for more cross-departmental collaboration.

We research and we integrate new things coming out, like ISA's data classification push.

We actually make their data classification training a requirement of our training.

So you are um if you are an indie performance participant, you are checking that off the to-do list.

Although it's required across the board, it's just another way to make sure we're capturing those active uh eyes and attendees.

Um, so here are some quotes, just a couple of user stories of folks who've come through and how they've enjoyed the course.

Um, I really am a little bit of a data nerd, so I enjoy it, but it's exciting to see folks come in and say, hey, it's not just about tracking my work, logging these numbers, it's actually about using this to try to make things better.

In addition to that, another feedback that we received is I loved Indie Performs, it was wonderful.

Then I went back to my day-to-day, and I kind of felt like I was, you know, left to carry on this torch on my own.

Of course, the performance team stays available and ready to help.

Um, but how do we retain that captured audience to make further gains?

So this year we actually tried a new initiative, which is Indie Performs office hours.

So we reached out to all nearly 300 of our past participants and offered a three-hour session where folks could drop in and bring their data questions.

Um, I think we had 15 attendees who ranged from doing it this year to doing it several years ago, and they were able to bring their data projects to us so we could answer questions.

Um, our deputy director and my two performance consultants and myself used those hours to offer one-on-one help, very similar to you know, other course office hours environment.

And it was a lot, it was a lot of fun to see that folks are taking these concepts back to their agencies and making progress, then seeking out assistance when they get to a place where they're ready to make some more steps, but they need a little bit of assistance.

So that's been a fun thing to see.

I I do hope we continue to do those office hours in the future so we can maintain that connection and try to get some you know greater bigger gains from this training course.

In addition to that, uh, we also have our annual symposium.

So this year, our symposium will be on January 29th, and we will do a review of all our 2025 participants, and we will be featuring their dashboards.

So we got to check out mine about what participants came and what agencies they were from.

You'll get to see dashboards of our uh participants and their data, which is quite exciting.

And we'll also use it as a networking opportunity and to answer some of those larger data questions and have a conversation.

We did this event last year, uh, which was my first year here at the City County, and it was quite enjoyable.

I believe we had about a hundred people attend, and uh it was open, it was kind of a fair type, a fair type environment so folks could come in, have a snack, chat, check out a dashboard, uh, and then go on their way during the lunch hours.

And I'm excited to offer an invitation to any of you if you'd like to join as well.

Again, that'll be Thursday, January 29th of this year.

So, other things that we're involved in, aside from Indie Performs and Data.

Uh, this year we launched a brand new training that's totally online.

Lean continuous improvement.

It has been a long sought-after and requested topic even prior to me joining the team, and that has to do with eliminating waste and uh really standardizing work so that we can actually get good data.

Uh so that totally online course has had has seen 96 people participate in different levels.

It is a self-guided training.

So people are able to choose what topics in that training are most interesting to them.

Um that not that we have had 96 people complete the entire training, but we've had 96 people engage in that training to learn certain chapters or engage in certain topics, which I think is exciting.

One of the feedback that we received from folks engaging in that training is that there's a real hunger for more and greater standard operating procedures training.

How do we create good standard operating procedures so that we can be more efficient, more effective, and again, we want to capture that data so we can start to measure performance.

And so this year, when we do our refresh of our content, we will be refreshing that section, that chapter of Indie Lean.

We'll be participating and collaborating with audit to do so.

Um I know you heard them talk about SOPs a little bit from the compliance side.

So leveraging that collaboration, I think will be really useful.

And then we also hope to bolster that by making the chapter not only longer and more in-depth so folks can really get into the nitty-gritty of SOPs, but also to create a template.

So a template, if I'm a new agency, perhaps a new program, or my SOPs just seem a little bit dated.

I have a template to get me started on something that could create a more in-depth SOPs.

As we know, SOP should describe not just how we do the work, but also why we do that work.

Is it by a legislative mandate?

Is this because we want to preserve separation of duties, or is this just because we need to start adhering to best practices?

Um, to move right along.

The other thing that we're kind of involved in is uh performance consultation.

So from our participants who come through Indie Performs, we often see agencies or programs want to further that project.

They learned how to do their data, maybe it gave them some insights, maybe they just want to push that data a little bit further, and now they'd like to pick up a project.

They want to further their work, they want to address a specific issue or move on an opportunity that's revealed itself.

And in those cases, we've uh engaged several agencies or staff within agencies to help them brainstorm, help them plan for these projects as sort of supportive project management consultants to help them to start make the making those plans, and um from that consultation work, we decided that um it would be a good opportunity to start to create something that we call change management.

So Indy Manages Change is a new training that's nearly completed in creation, and that is to really focus in on this consultation piece.

Your agency is undergoing an organizational change, and you need to understand these change concepts in order to make it successful.

Um, you know, something like 70% of changes fail.

And so, how do we give those tools to the experts but also remain on the line as a lifeline for them and again as a supportive consultant to help them to see greater successes in those projects?

So I'm excited that that training will uh probably be released at some point in 2026, and it's a hybrid course.

So a lot of concepts introduced online in order to get that exponential reach.

We are only a team of three three people with the support of our uh deputy directors and leadership as well.

Um, so it's been exciting to see us use those online resources to try to get a little bit more reach there.

And um in the end, uh finally, we ourselves are always learning and growing.

So just here in 2025, we participated in many professional development activities at low or no cost, uh, including industry networking with Green Dot Consulting through their lean coffee, where we talked with performance professionals who come from anywhere from like the healthcare industry to private sector, finance industry.

Um, and so that's been interesting to see how the two industries can compare or contrast.

We attended the state data day as well as the Indiana Digital Government Summit.

And all of my team members were part of ISA's co-pilot cohort this year to start to understand how AI could be leveraged when we uh look at performance work and improving our performance, uh, and how that internal co-pilot initiative could be you know applied in our case.

And uh I think I've done a lot of monologuing, so I'll open it up to questions.

I know it's quite a lot, uh, but I hope that gives you a little taste about what performance is up to.

Thank you very much.

Questions I have it.

The question I have is um you said upon successful completion.

Has any agency or department not successfully completed?

Um, so the train are you mean for indie performance?

Sure.

So uh the training is rigorous.

Um, it is uh 12 hours, um, and we do that in three-hour chunks over the course of a little over a month.

And so we do see situations where people enroll, um, they're very excited to be involved, and then perhaps they lose a staff member, or perhaps their schedule changes.

So, you know, I I think we keep that bar there because of course we want a standard of care, we want um a baseline.

I don't want to give you a certificate of completion if you don't complete some certain things.

So we do see uh individuals start and then unfortunately they do need to drop, or in a lot of cases, they transfer to the next session.

So perhaps you try in the spring and the time commitment was just not there for you, but we'll have you back in the summer or in the fall uh to complete that training.

Okay.

Another question is it like you said it was self-paced, so is it a time limit?

Is it a time frame?

Do they have like can they start it and then six months later they still working on it, or how does that work?

Sure.

Um, so the self-paced training we offer is the Indy lean, which is a little different than our data course, and they can go back to that at any time.

It's organized in modules, so perhaps I have an interest in problem solving.

There's a problem identification and solving module.

I could just watch that one, and then in six months, I want to start eliminating waste in some of my processes.

I could go back and I could do that section of the module.

Our Indy Performs course, which is our data course, um, that's pretty specific.

Uh, you do need to complete it kind of, it builds on itself, um, and we offer that three times per year.

Absolutely.

Thanks for the question.

Other questions?

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thanks for the presentation.

Um Councillor Hart and I chair the AI commission, so that's a interest of ours, particularly as the uh in the next couple years and we're looking at budgets and looking at how to expand that through ISA and throughout the enterprise.

Expand a little bit if you could please on what you're using AI for, why you anticipate using it for, and what kind of metrics are you looking for?

Sure.

Um I can speak a little bit in the real world and then I can kind of speak a little bit maybe in the um in the aspirational world, I think a little bit.

Um me and my two consultants, the three of us, we all were uh excited to be early adopters with the ISA co-pilot cohort, which I'm thinking might be aware of, um, just took place over the last few few weeks.

And that was exciting to see, especially from I think a security standpoint.

It's an internal m AI model, so it's a lot more protected, especially when we talk about data and city data, that's a huge consideration and a topic that we teach in in deeper forms, data privacy considerations.

And so I think in trying that out, that was really teaching ourselves what is the development of this model, what's the maturity of this model, and is it applicable?

And so I think we're early stages figuring out the real world applications.

Um, although we were able to get the model to do things like uh produce um Gantt charts for us if you're familiar with project management, a Gantt chart would be basically a schedule.

So if you have a very complex um project you'd like to get off the ground, there's many things happening at once, you can create a schedule called the Gantt chart.

And so some of those tools being able to, again, we're only a team of three, um, but be able to to harness the the use of that AI model to help build those tools that we would ourselves be able to put that human eye on to ensure they're appropriate.

Um but uh yeah, so it's been exciting to see.

I think we're very very early stages, but that's kind of where we hope.

Um it's been hit or miss with the model, uh, I would say on useful outputs.

Um so I think there's some training involved, both training ourselves and training the algorithm to give us uh something that's kind of gonna be valuable for those tools.

Yeah.

Do you foresee your agency or folks being part of the implementation effort of AI across the enterprise, or will you just be another agency learning from ISA, or will you kind of collaborate with them to spread knowledge and training throughout the enterprise?

That's a great question.

I think uh where we are in that AI journey is very early stages, and we are looking to ISA to be uh a leader there.

Um, but I think that given the work and given the charge of both our agencies, I could definitely see us collaborating in the future.

Um, particularly when we uh engage that consultation piece, and we have agencies who come to us for advice, or can I just use AI for this?

Or, you know, and then we would have the discernment to say, hey, it's time for us to loop in an ISA partner, or hey, here's how we've seen AI be successful, um, as well as deploying AI in our own work as far as again creating some process tools for us so that we've got a greater reach there.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, partially.

Um, and within your department, I f one thing we've learned through some of our study is every agency is gonna have to kind of have their own internal AI guru who's gonna be the contact person a lot of of uh the purpose for absorbing what ISA is putting out into training, so we can't train 5,000 people at the same time.

Are you guys identifying who your AI guru will be within your department?

Sure.

Or am I looking at her right now?

Well, me uh with the support of my two consultants, of course, uh it's a big lift.

And I view us not just as I guess the you know, using the language you use as the internal OAP IA go AI gurus, but also as trusted uh individuals that other agencies come to with questions.

Not that we can always answer those questions, but ensuring that we know where to point them and we know how to safely you know guide them.

So it's great to know that um we're hoping to identify sort of an AI expert, especially if we engage in projects and we think AI or the agency would like to deploy AI in a certain capacity, knowing that they have an AI expert or an AI contact would be great.

Yeah, absolutely.

One thing we would encourage is a closing point.

Any SOP eventually is gonna have an AI component to it, is our effort or our long-term goal.

So just to keep that filter in mind when you're working SOPs, where would the AAI model fit into what we're doing today?

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing that up specifically.

Yeah, absolutely.

As we construct the template, that's definitely a consideration that we can make sure is in plain language technology and use of technology and particularly privacy are both sections spelled out in our template.

But I think ensuring the language, you know, artificial intelligent or even co-pilot, since we know that's our you know proprietary model.

Uh that's a very useful suggestion.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for that discussion.

Other questions?

All right, thank you for your presentation.

I think we go back to Director Jones to take us to the end.

Thanks.

All right.

Thanks again to Heather and Caitlin for their leadership and leading both those teams.

Uh I hope you were able to kind of glean some details on kind of the work we do kind of day to day.

So with that, I'll move into kind of more traditional update to close us out for our final meeting of the year.

Working administrative leader uh Heather mentioned it.

We still have the senior auditor position vacant.

Uh, our plan going into 2026 is to utilize a staffing uh firm that we've done traditionally, which we've had some success with to identify a temporary uh incumbent for that position that with the hopes of of hiring them on full time.

So that will be the charge early in the first part of the year.

Caitlin touched on some of the training and development that we've done.

Uh uh, members of both teams are still going through ISA's Google certificate courses across program management, data analytics, and cyber security.

Uh it's coming up next week, I believe we're participating in the Institute of Internal Auditors uh November Ethics event uh on the audit side.

The performance team is also participating in Purdue's lean principals uh course training that will be coming up soon.

And then we also hosted our annual uh City County Internal Controls Awareness Training that took place on October 2nd, uh, thanks to our audit partners at Forbus Mazars came in and had a great uh presentation.

It was the first time we went back to being in person uh in a number of years, so we had about 35-ish people gathered um for a very fun and engaging fraud-related uh presentation uh for internal controls training for this year.

Here today looking on both sides.

I know both Heather and Caitlin kind of touched on this audit.

These are kind of some of the specific clinic cash counts that are uh completed or in progress, and ones we're we're looking to kind of finish up before the end of the year.

The cash counts are kind of an auxiliary activity.

Of course, our core function on the audit side are kind of traditional performance audits.

Uh we do have two of those still in progress.

Uh we are working with the Office of Public Health and Safety with a review, and that is nearing completion.

Uh we'll certainly be done by the end of the year.

It's just a few uh things that we have to dot our I's and cross our T's with.

And then our audit of the auditor's office uh benefit benefit leave.

Uh we started that beginning of the year, we had some snags with kind of some of the data.

Uh we also kind of pulled in some other directions over the summer.

So that one has a little more to go, but is also close to closer to the finish line than not, and we're hoping to get that wrapped up here soon.

From the performance team side, um, here's some more stats on kind of the sessions for IndyPerform.

Indie Performs, we had all three this year, again with 46 participants across 17 different agencies, and a lot of success from those that participated.

The other trainings are offered the lean continuous improvement is live and still available, and also the consulting efforts are going quite well, as Caitlin detailed.

In development or professional development, I should say, um, or all again, also the events that she she listed, so I won't rehash those.

Uh for the rest of this year, again, we on the audit side we have our cash count reviews, um, our annual entity risk assessment.

We're continuing to evolve that.

I know if you recall, we presented it in the past.

There is a highly quantitative portion of it.

We're looking to kind of truncate that down.

It provides some good insights, but not as many, I think, as as we might have um thought in the past.

So we're gonna truncate that down and really start to lean into the qualitative element by sitting down face to face with city and county leaders that have responsibility over their agencies and departments to get a sense of where their heads are and where their concerns are related to risk, and then combining those two together to to form a cohesive audit plan for for the year.

And we'll also be working on our annual report for the year, which also is your annual report.

So we'll look forward to presenting that in the spring.

Coming up in a couple weeks here in mid-November is International Fraud Prevention and Awareness Week.

I'm not sure there's someone in North America more excited for this week than our deputy director, Vivian Agnes.

I can't tell you how many times throughout the year she brings it up.

But uh so she's gonna take the lead on that, and we're gonna have some new we've done a variety of things throughout the years, uh, but Vivian has a great creative mind, and uh she between she and Heather, I think we're gonna have some fun stuff for the enterprise.

Yes, Dave.

So she should does she think she gets to travel or something?

Is that what uh is that what the excitement is?

No, I just think it's uh I I think that um first of all we had our in-person fraud event, which was very well received.

People were excited about that.

Um, and I think that the topic is something that is very accessible to folks, and I feel like it's a great opportunity for our audit team to be more front-facing and to give folks more information about how they can be a part of uh mitigating risk across the city.

So I just I I don't know, I think it'll be fun.

We'll see.

I shouldn't have made light of it.

It's she's I love that she is so passionate about it, um, and so we're looking to keep making that fun for folks.

Um this is gonna take place in 2026, but we have to kind of do some prep on the front end.

We are at the point where uh our office needs another peer review.

Uh we used the uh ALGA Association of Local Government Auditors, they have a peer review program where municipal auditors from other parts of the country come and sit in and go through our work over a period, it's about a three-year period.

So we will need to do that again in 2026 and um are looking forward to collaborating with them on that.

And then of course the SOP training and development will continue moving forward.

I did mention the risk assessment kind of changes with weighting more qualitative measures over quantitative.

Um, and again, we're gonna kind of focus on peer collaboration in that.

One of the things we've really noticed this year, especially on the audit side, and I I've said it many times in the last few years is that because of our size, we and our our role, we want to be viewed as a partner to agencies and departments across the enterprise.

I don't think that was always the case historically, but I credit our our staff and our team with how they've engaged, how they've approached, and their professionalism throughout all that, that we are seeing the benefits of that and that we are having more units come to us with hey, this is a problem, can you look into it?

We're not sure if this is going right, can you look into it?

And I think that's the ultimate uh test of of kind of where our unit should be is that having that collaboration because we've uncovered stuff that we might not have found normally, and that is a sign in my view of a healthy, healthier risk culture.

I'm not saying we're perfect, we're far from there, but that is something we uh it's kind of a bit of a feather in our cap for this year, and I really appreciate the collaboration of our colleagues, but also the work of our team to get us to that point.

And so we'll look to continue to grow that into 2026.

On the performance side, uh they will continue to review the feedback from this year's sessions and refresh the training to make it new and and uh valuable for those that participate.

Uh the they'll also be involved in the standard operating procedures training, and they'll continue to develop their change management training.

As Caitlin mentioned, the 2026 Indie Performance Symposium is January 29th, excuse me.

And uh they also will continue to work on those ad hoc performance consultation uh initiatives.

I think that's all I had.

I did want to add one thing.

I was looking back through the the the uh meeting minutes from last uh meeting in July, and I believe Councillor Boots had a question about the permitting kind of process and looking into where that was.

I don't have a uh substantive update on kind of our role and what was found in the work that that uh director glass did, but uh it did actually come up at cabinet this week, uh the mayor's cabinet meeting that um that continues to be something that they're looking into, and specifically DPW, BNS, and DMD are have a little I don't know if you call it a committee or whatnot that is is looking to collaborate more, specifically within BNS, they're looking to kind of um align some processes better and have them be concurrent, whereas they were kind of uh in secession prior to that, and so uh that's not a super detailed update, but I wanted to pass that along at least that they are are now having active talks amongst the three of them about where efficiencies can be created in order to speed up that process kind of across the board.

I know at one point you were talking about an omnibusman type concept.

Um that's been 18 months ago.

Right, right.

Has that been implemented?

Uh myself, I haven't heard anything about that since that around that time.

Um but I can I can ask them if they have any plans for that.

This isn't necessarily the exact forum for that this discussion, but the big issue I hear from particularly the A and E construction industry is we ask for a permit, we do we get storm water, then we get site plan, then we get electrical, then we get mechanical, and it's just three, four weeks, five, six weeks, seven, eight.

For each of them.

I apply, all you people get together, give me a response.

Yeah, let's get this break ground.

And that in construction, as you know, time is money.

And as that stretches out, we're getting companies losing the building season, missing deadlines, paying late fees, all because our city cannot give them the permits when they need it.

And that's borderline unacceptable the way to operate the city.

So we that really needs some focus.

Yes, yes, I totally understand the concern and importance of that.

And so uh again, it's not specifically our area, but I did at least want to pass that along.

That it seems they are trying in another new approach that hopefully will yield some results.

Okay, one more question, sir.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you you talked about the program and vendor manage management review for OPHS.

Does that delve into it at all the elevate elevation grant program and what the recipients are doing with the grant money?

That's a great question.

That is within our scope.

Um we haven't specifically gotten super detailed within the elevation grants themselves.

Uh we're looking more with the general operational compliance, because I believe from what we've found so far, the same kind of practices are happening across all uh contracts that they they've done.

And so uh we still have some time, so we can dig a little deeper into those to make sure that to get a sense of kind of what has taken place with those specifically because I know there's a lot of funds that are behind that.

All right, thank you.

Any other questions, uh Director Jones.

All right.

Does that conclude your presentation?

It does, yes.

Uh just in closing, I would say you know, appreciate everyone's uh commitment and participation in the committee.

Uh we know that it's not always easy to get up on a Friday morning, but we appreciate you being here and supporting us.

And as always, if there's anything uh you want to share or or have any feedback for us, we we're more than happy to hear it.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And I I would echo that.

Um I appreciate everyone's attention today.

I know we ran a little bit longer, but I appreciate the um little bit further um presentation by the the audit and performance sections.

I think that was good information for the committee.

I would like to publicly um address or uh recognize uh Tanya Njay.

In Jai, I'm sorry, my my apologies.

Um potentially this is our her last meeting.

Um we we all hope that she gets reappointed and comes back.

I don't know if that's what she hopes, but that's what we hope.

Um but she has been a she has been a very faithful member of the committee, so thank you for your participation and you always have good questions, and so thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Well, we we hope you come back.

And our our next meeting is in March uh 13th of 2026, 9 a.m.

Um room to be announced.

Um this room is not as nice as last month's room.

We'll try to get the nice one all you see what we can do.

But again, if there's if those proposed dates, if there are any conflicts, uh please let me know because if they're multiple, we'll try to move it.

But try to keep us on the same schedule but avoid uh spring break, candidly is the one need to be avoided.

Very good.

All right, any anything else?

All right, and we are adjourned.

Thank you very much.