The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) is required by Washington State law and Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards to have a periodic peer review of the quality of the audits produced by its office and the competence of its professional audit staff.  Peer reviews are conducted by outside experts to determine if audits have been conducted in accordance with audit standards and to suggest improvements.

JLARC contracted with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to organize a team of peers from around the nation to review and evaluate its internal quality assurance system, overall report quality, and staff competency.  To conduct the review, NCSL assembled a team of highly experienced and respected professional performance auditors from legislative auditing offices in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. 

The peer review panel issued a report, which commended JLARC for the high quality and professionalism of the work it has performed.  In their report, they concluded the following:

“In our opinion, the Office’s quality review process was designed and employed effectively during the period reviewed. Consequently, we provide reasonable assurance that the Office was in conformance with applicable quality assurance, report quality, and staff competency standards, as defined in the United States Government Auditing Standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States, during the period reviewed.  We found overall report quality to be high and the staff to be competent.”

For further details regarding this peer review, please contact JLARC’s Legislative Auditor, Ruta Fanning, at 360-786-5175 or e-mail at Fanning.ruta@leg.wa.gov.  View a full copy of the peer review report here.