Three Challenges OIGs Face—and How eCASE Solves Them

eCASE Helps Solve Challenges OIGs Face

Inspectors general and their staff are entrusted by the public to combat fraud, waste, abuse, and other criminal activity within government agencies. They help instill trust. It is a tall order that is met every day by the thousands of employees dedicated to doing their very best.

And doing their best is hampered when they are burdened with legacy systems or trying to create audit trails with spreadsheets, Outlook, and things like “v31-bob-edits-after-paula.docx” tagged onto document names. When timeframes are months, or even a year or more, coupled with mountains of documentation and correspondence, coordination with internal and external stakeholders, and the fact that details matter, record keeping can overwhelm understaffed offices.

By using systems that automate the mundane – like tracking all correspondence or ensuring all edits are tracked and that everyone is using the same version of the document – staff can spend their time and resources focused on the analysis and recommendations. And they have more time and resources for other audits and investigations.

We call that a win – for the public, for the government, and for the hardworking OIG staff.

OPEXUS exists to empower professionals to elevate trust in public institutions through the design, development, and delivery of specialized case management software. No single government entity does more to instill the public’s trust than OIGs. And we developed eCASE Investigations and eCASE Audit to provide a specialized, web-based, low-code, end-to-end solution that is configurable for each specific office/agency.

Here are three challenges that OIGs face and how eCASE helps solve them.

1) Improving the flexibility of an audit or investigations management system

For OIGs, maintaining compliance with security policies is essential when seeking to modernize application hosting and data. Two of our recent customers, USPS OIG and the U.S. Department of Education’s OIG, sought to migrate their service to a web-based, FedRAMP-certified cloud-hosted environment.

They needed the flexibility of a web-based application and its update cadence of 2-3 months rather than every 12 months or more. Additionally, the USPS OIG desired an Offline Client module so staff, which number in the hundreds, could continue their work in the field when a secure Internet connection wasn’t available.

2) Data migration from a legacy system

We have all been there – stuck in legacy systems because the cost of change is too much. Maybe it is the culture, a lack of resources, or the current rules and regulations that stifle your productivity. Or maybe it is the thought of migrating all of the data in your legacy system.

Data migration is a real barrier of OIGs looking to improve their systems. As we noted above, investigations and audits generate a lot of data, and maintaining that data’s integrity is critical. There is no room for mistakes.

So, the thought of having to migrate data to a new system is daunting and often a roadblock to progress.

Our teams have successfully migrated customers from legacy systems, including Autoaudit and Teammate, onto eCASE. One example is USAID’s OIG. Their legacy system failed to provide flexibility in maintaining internal controls for future policy development – some eCASE provides.

Through eCASE , we provide continuous administrative capabilities that users can modify to meet various data migration needs including data collection, internal processing, and reporting. Our team is able to work tirelessly to migrate years of legacy data from any legacy tool into eCase with a large data migration. Our services include data translation, mapping, and development work to build and model data for import into eCASE.

3) Collaborating with agency program offices

In the past, OIGs had considered application integration and collaboration with program offices too risky to accomplish. However, they saw the value in program offices being able to provide information and respond to requests directly into the same system. After all, fewer steps mean fewer errors and quicker cooperation with requests.

eCASE provides a secure environment that offers platform-level role-based security and permissions so that such collaboration is possible.

The Washington, DC government now utilizes eCASE for its OIG staff. Hundreds of staff members are able to coordinate and work collaboratively with program offices through a single tool. They can automatically import completed projects to resolution modules and enable collaborative work on planning and implementing corrective actions. The configuration capabilities of the platform enable trusted access ensuring that agency users can only access resolution data that is specifically made available to them.

There is a way to solve the unique modernization challenges that OIGs face while maintaining the highest standards for security, efficiency, and transparency. To learn more about our governance, risk, and compliance automation solutions, eCASE Audit and eCASE Investigations, please email info@opexustech.com or request a demo today.