UCAL (UC Davis) Data Analytics Audit Services

The action being approved is for audit services using data analytics for a firm fixed price task order. The order is a logical follow-on to order / GST1111BJ7023 awarded competitively to Withum Smith + Brown (WSB) on 08/05/2011 against GSA Schedule # GS-23F-0004U.

Under order GS-23F-0004U / GST1111BJ7023, the National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General (NSF OIG) engaged WSB to provide audit services using data analytics to support two NSF OIG audits, the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the University of California Davis (UC Davis). The objective of these audits was to determine if the costs claimed by these two Universities on their NSF awards for the period January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2010 were allocable, allowable, reasonable, and in conformity
with NSF award terms and conditions and applicable Federal award requirements. For these audits, WSB supported the NSF-OIG's audit by providing data analytics services (e.g., for each data set, searching for duplicate entries; utilizing Benford's law; analyzing burn rates for expenses for end of grants periods and grant extension periods; reviewing outliers from stratified expense categories; comparing employee information to payroll, vendor and participant support expenditure entries; comparing University employee and vendor lists to suspension and debarment lists, etc.) in order to discern anomalies, outliers, and aberrant transactions which appeared to represent unallowable, unallocable, and/or unreasonable costs charged to UCAL's NSF awards. WSB also assisted the NSF OIG with testing these
aberrant transactions during audit field work to determine if such claimed costs were in fact allowable, allocable, and reasonable. The contractor provided two senior-level auditors for this effort.