Preventing procurement fraud in higher education

Colleges and universities are charged with providing a quality education to their students as well as performing cutting edge research on a variety of subjects. The procurement process is a critical institution support function that ensures students and professors have the resources they need to complete their work.  A key goal of procurement management is to ensure that goods and services are purchased in a fair and transparent manner.

While the complexity of purchases can vary significantly within an institution in terms of dollar value, scope, and time for implementation, the potential for fraud can happen at any level of purchase or stage of the procurement process. Organizations can be defrauded through bid rigging, submission of false expenses, and bribery of employees. These actions create a variety of issues, including purchases that do not present the best value and can cost an organization millions of dollars beyond that which is required. Internal Audit can provide support to procurement management by reviewing and educating them on the vulnerabilities and risk associated with fraud schemes to help colleges and universities effectively manage procurement and contract functions. This webinar will educate internal auditors and other stakeholders on some techniques and tools that can be used to detect and prevent procurement fraud.

In this webinar we discuss:

• The common types of procurement fraud
• Contract management  practices  and internal controls to help prevent procurement fraud
• Strategies end users and procurement managers can use to protect their organization and ensure best value purchases
• Ethical behaviors in procurement

Learning objectives:

• Illustrate the risks associated with contracts, purchase orders, purchasing cards and the overall contracting process
• Develop a fraud incident protocol
• Provide examples of best practices in contract administration
• Identify competencies for procurement managers
• Identify strategies and internal controls to reduce procurement risk

For more information on this topic, or to learn how Baker Tilly higher education specialists can help, contact our team.