Podcasting - Emerging Issues and Best Practice Dissemination

A strong control environment is one where pertinent information is identified, captured and communicated in a form and a timeframe that enables people to carry out their responsibilities.

If you are late to the podcast phenomenon (like I was!), I thought you may benefit from this overview of podcasting and how it can be used to disseminate best practice information.

Podcasting can help in this respect.

What is Podcasting?

What is considered the first use of the term “podcasting” occurred in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004 (so you are not that far behind after all!) as a synonym for audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio.

Podcasting has become popular as it allows listeners to time–shift content, i.e., to listen — when it suits them — to radio–like programming on portable MP3 and related devices. Dissatisfaction with traditional radio — which is perceived to have too much advertising and is perceived to have generic programming — is fueling interest in programming that better meets individual needs.

Neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable player, and no broadcasting is required. At the most basic – all you need is a computer with a sound card.

A good overview of podcasting can be found at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

As an example of the explosion of interest in podcasting – were you to have searched Google for the word “podcast” on September 28, 2004 you would have found 24 hits.

As of November 5, 2005 Google reports 90,100,000 hits for “podcast”!

When Would I Use a Podcast?

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system is increasingly used for other reasons, including:

• A way for to distribute audio as an addition to existing text (or mostly text) products.
  
• Conference and meeting alerts. Podcasts can be packaged to alert attendees to agendas, hosted roundtables and daily feedback.
  
• Advocacy. As an example, the 5,500 locked out staff (editors, journalists, technicians, hosts, etc.) of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were podcasting news and other programming during August and September of 2005.
  
• US medical associations use podcasts to update clinicians with summaries of important articles as well as interviews.
  
• As you will see below, a number of management consultancies have also begun using podcasts to raise awareness of emerging issues (and no doubt to seek another avenue for revenue!).

Yeah – That’s All Very Interesting … But When Would I Use Podcasting as an Information Tool ?

A central element of a strong internal controls environment is one where there is ongoing communication and information flowing within and throughout an organisation.

Podcasts (and before you respond – no I haven’t thought out the technical or bandwidth implications of the following) could be used to educate and update niche or broad audiences about:

• Competitor activity
  
• Customer complaints
  
• Meetings
  
• Process descriptions
  
• Process improvements
  
• Product and plan launches
  
• Staff movements
  
• Success stories

A recent article in a United States paper noted that podcasts were being used internally within companies to provide a media for those in large or disparate teams to hear from the team’s leadership on a regular and informal basis.

Internal Audit could access short podcasts as a free (!), timely and easily disseminated way of educating the Internal Audit team (and now others) about emerging internal control issues and risks and understanding global best practice – and being a witness, from a safe distance, when internal controls don’t work as well as they should.

OK – So What’s Next?

Before you can podcast, you need an aggregator.

An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of computer program that collects syndicated web content from weblogs, podcasts and mainstream mass media websites.

Aggregators improve upon the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper."

The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or instant messaging.

There are many different free and fee based aggregators on the internet. One popular free aggregator is:

http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php

How Do I Know When a New Podcast is Available?

An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content.

That is – once you have set up your aggregator and subscribed to the podcasts that you want to subscribe to – the rest is done for you!

How Do I Know the Difference between a Good and a Bad Podcast?

In many respects, podcast quality it is in the ear of the beholder – as with the internet the more well known the brand name (usually!) the more reliable the underlying information.

Internal Audit’s rule of thumb is to listen to the podcast before disseminating the relevant link or feed – and even then we get it wrong.

Internal Controls Weakness in the UN Oil-for-Food Programme

It will be critical for the UN’s monitoring of the agreement, and delivery of medical aid to the needy, to be watertight.

If there are flaws, the story will quickly turn negative.

Note to the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from an adviser on May 21, 1996.
The day after signing of the agreement between Iraq and the United Nations to start the Oil-for-Food Programme.

Paul Volcker – Chairman of the US Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – recently completed a series of eight detailed reports into the Iraqi Oil for Food programme (“the Programme”).

The reports provide an excellent overview of a poor internal control environment negatively impacting upon the successful implementation of a project.


Note to the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali from an adviser on May 21, 1996.
The day after signing of the agreement between Iraq and the United Nations to start the Oil-for-Food Programme.


Background

A temporary United Nations initiative to provide urgent humanitarian relief to Iraq stretched to seven years and more than $US100 billion in transactions (over $US64 billion in oil sales and almost $US37 billion for food, medicines and equipment).

The successes of the Programme came at a substantial cost.

There was corruption within the United Nations at a critical management point. Staff administering the Programme were operating within an institutional structure that had not kept pace with the expansion of the scope of the operations and the demands being made on the Programme. As problems arose with the Programme, the Secretary General was reluctant to recognise his own responsibility for the Programme’s shortcomings.

For further information regarding the Programme, Wikipedia has an excellent overview of the Programme scope and subsequent troubles at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_for_Food_program.

Volcker’s Report on the Management of the Programme

On September 7th 2005, Vocker Committee released their report on the management of the Programme (refer: http://www.iic-offp.org/Mgmt_Report.htm ).

In summary the Committee was of the view that:

• “professional disciplines” at the United Nations are weak and eroded and the Secretariat, from its senior levels down, proved unable to deal effectively with political pressures on its administrative processes;
  
• there appears to be a pervasive culture of responsibility avoidance and resistance to accountability;
  
• there was an absence of suitable administrative infrastructure for dealing with the exceptional and sudden demands of the Programme;
  
• there was an absence of adequate and independent control and auditing capacity – and little or no desire by the Programme’s Director to develop one.

Internal Control Weaknesses

Volcker’s Committee report reads like a well written internal audit report. The Committee was critical of the following control issues:

• Poor Control Environment: Instances of corruption extended to the top of the Programme administration and signalled the absence of a sufficiently strong organisational ethic – “an ethic that should permeate its leadership and staff if the United Nations is to command the respect upon which its work depends.”
  
• Poor Control Activities: The UN Security Council – as the overseeing governance body – failed to define clearly the Programme’s practical parameters, policies and administration policies. When things went awry – and they surely did – when troublesome conflicts arose between political objectives and administrative effectiveness, decisions were delayed, bungled or simply shunned.The administrative structures and the personnel practices were not fit to meet the challenges presented by the Programme or even programs of much lesser scope.
  
• Poor Information and Communication: There was no simple way to accurately track Programme expenditures across different United Nations agencies. The presumption of central budget authority for the Programme was not matched by an ability to assess actual spending (much less the effectiveness of the spending), or to insist on uniform accounting standards or treatment – “surely the difficulties perceived should not be tolerated in any other programs, however large or small”.
  
• Poor Monitoring: "Most notable among the United Nations’ structural faults is a grievous absence of effective auditing and management controls.”The Programme exposed chronic weakness of planning, inadequate finding and the absence of enough professional personnel to implement controls and auditing. As important, was a palpable absence of authority for the auditors and the lack of clear, if any, reporting lines to ‘the Top’. As a consequence, needed independence was absent.Line managers could and did divert auditing initiatives. Follow-up to critical findings was erratic or non-existent.