We do follow-up audits. The process for the departments is that when we make the recommendations, they will agree with our recommendations and they will prepare an action plan. From time to time we will do a follow-up audit, but remembering the time frames involved, by the time we finish an audit we probably have to give the department about three years or so to implement those recommendations.
Then we would need to come back to do an audit, and the work we do in that world is to make sure that we still have an audit level of assurance. That means that we go in and do another full audit, which will include at least some follow-up of the recommendations we made previously. To complete that second audit from the time we choose it until the time we report it could easily take 18 months.
Counting from the point in time that we present the first audit report until we can present a follow-up audit report, we may be five years out from when we made the original recommendations.
It's certainly why the role of this committee is particularly important. The follow-up audits are important, but they can't be the only way of making sure that departments are implementing the recommendations. The fact that departments have to come here and have to tell you what they're going to do, or maybe you bring them back in after a year or a year and a half and they explain to you the progress they've made—all of those types of things—are I think a fundamental aspect of making sure that departments are in fact implementing the recommendations.