Government offices and IT budgets, audits, Microsoft Windows Office 365, Adobe EA, and more
by Mountain Computers Inc., Publication Date: Thursday, September 9, 2021
View Count: 1177, Keywords: Government, Budgets, IT, Audits, Licensing, Hashtags: #Government #Budgets #IT #Audits #Licensing
I had the opportunity to catch up on government budgets and meeting notes, and ran across an IT budget request for about $1 mil in office 365 and adobe ae licensing.
A seasoned colleague asked me why audit, don't you trust me? I said, sure I trust, you, yet must verify. a president once said that, "trust yet verify". Now do your IT audit and report back the results.
What I find amazing is the lack of detail sometimes in those requests and reports for the public's immediate view. It's okay. Plus, was an IT audit done in lieu of the renewal to confirm actual licensing and seat count. Yes, it's expensive to do an internal IT audit, yet it must be done every renewal cycle for licensing and budgeting purposes. One hopes they are always on top of it.
One audit I did for Siemens Business Services as an external secret surprise audit was for Colonial Bank. The results were amazing and astonishing and of course led to the demise of the bank.
The other one I did was RR Donnelley and that was an eye opener as well. Both included travel and of course, their sites were actually quite good, of course, they knew I was coming in this case, versus not so for the Colonial Bank.
Today, I run IT internal audits about once per year for 50 some companies in lieu of IT support needs and I keep them compliant as we go. That is so important, plus, we save money just by not renewing licenses not in use. Some employees just want a license rather than need a license, and they can use a free version of the software for read-only needs when in fact, they want the professional edition for no apparent reasons, other than in the last company that is what they had. Weird. Odd. True.
Remember, in some companies I do work for, one should *trust* their IT management, yet always verify. No one is above reproach, even me. Plus, the CEO and owners appreciate an external 3rd party eye is doing oversight on the IT folks that they have under roof. External consultants have a wider range of view and experience than full time internal staff.
Remember, an internal IT audit goes nowhere, except to internal corrective action and logged as such in case down the road an external entity asks what is going on with licensing and compliance.
more to come...
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