Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Instead of manually recording hours that employees work, the Territorial Audit Office (TAO) has called on the Health Department to evolve towards increasingly automated methods of recording and reporting of employee work times.

This is according to one of the issues of concern raised by TAO in its Performance Audit report of the more than $14 million in federal CARES Act funding awarded to DoH during the COVID pandemic.

And this issue — “Payroll -Timesheet and Attendance Records are Manually Recorded” — is documented by TAO under the “Other Matters” section of the report and separate from the main findings and recommendations that were discussed in details by the auditor.

Part eight of the Samoa News report on the DoH audit looks at this issue of concern by TAO, as three lawmakers — who have read the report told Samoa News that they were surprised of this concern raised by TAO when all government entities were suppose to use time clocks, as enforced by previous administrations

TAO auditors said in the report that employee time and attendance monitoring is a necessity for every business and organization. The manual and attendance practice is a traditional system that requires filling in attendance on manual timesheets.

TAO points out, that the manual time and attendance system has some benefits such as:

•        It is cheaper — cost effective — and it does not require any hardware or software making it initial saving but can be easily manipulated as data is recorded manually.

•        It is simple to use and;

•        Resistant to power cuts — in rare instance of power outage.

“However, the manual system is very time consuming and does not benefit the department in the long term,” TAO auditors points out. “We have identified from audit testing that not all employees were using the automated time and attendance system, the biometric time clock.”

“This practice assumes a huge degree of trust between the time administrators — the Time Keeper — and the employee and requires employees to fill out their time accurately and honestly and not carry out time theft or buddy punching,” TAO explained.

Furthermore, there is also a challenge by the Payroll team when collecting details about employees working hours and payroll processing without any errors.

TAO said that its audit identified ten (10) employees did not use the time clock to punch in and a missing time clock punch in form was used to fill out their hours. Additionally, two of these forms have no reasonable explanation as to why employees did not use the time clock.

According to TAO, the department at the time already has in place an automated time and attendance system.

“Although the government has been and was expected the understanding as Covid-19 put employee health and well- being at the forefront of human resource management [sic],” the report noted. “This is not a time that human resource and payroll management missteps shall be forgiven and the need for good internal controls continues to exist.

In its recommendation, TAO said, “As the department evolves toward increasingly automated methods of recording and reporting of employee work times, it is important to implement and maintain a well-defined system including a review of the current attendance system that provides management with confidence that controls are working as designed”.

In addition, DoH shall look at possible options — a risk and or a disaster plan — to have an employee time and attendance reporting system in place during unforeseen circumstances.

“Such plans shall include an infrastructure to work remotely or to make changes that are necessary during a crisis,” the auditors said.

DoH management said in its response that the department is working diligently to install biometric time clock terminals to avoid manipulation and time consumption. Furthermore, DoH concurs with the recommended action.