Delaware leads the charge on data integrity

This past Monday, I had the pleasure of speaking to Delaware State Auditor Kathy McGuiness. Auditor McGuiness was elected to her position in 2018, and she hit the ground running by implementing new ways for Delaware residents to report fraud and keep track of how their taxpayer dollars were being spent. Now, State Auditor McGuiness is focused on COVID-19. She spearheaded the creation of a standardized template that she and other state auditors will use to evaluate their states’ COVID-19 data collection and reporting. The template, created in collaboration with auditors from Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, is a rubric which watchdog offices may use as a baseline in determining which datasets they examine and which questions they ask of state politicians and public health officials.

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States are auditing their COVID-19 data

This past Tuesday, several top state auditors announced a joint initiative: they’re going to review how state COVID-19 data are collected and reported. Auditors from five states—Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—worked with the National State Auditors Association to put together a framework that every state can use. 13 other states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, have already expressed interest in using the framework.

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