Thank You For A Successful Open House & Listening Session: Here's what we heard you say...

INDEPENDENT CITY AUDITOR. REPORTING DIRECTLY TO THE RESIDENTS.

Thank You For Joining Us.

Dear Friend,

On Monday, December 9th, my team and I hosted our first open house and listening session. I want to thank everyone who joined us and took advantage of the opportunity to dialogue with my staff and me, learn more about #ARFU, share concerns, and ask questions.

Our time with you produced much food for thought. Below are the top three takeaways from our discussion. You’d like:

To learn how you can uplift our work. Consider becoming an #ARFU Champion, forwarding our newsletters to your network, and inviting residents to subscribe so they can receive them directly. Our #ARFU Champions help push the work forward by attending the semiannual Committee/City Council presentations of the #ARFU Report and speaking in support of the recommendations during public comment.

More opportunities to engage with us in person to share your ideas and elevate your concerns. #ARFU Champions also help us educate the public by hosting #ARFU information sessions around town. I'm committed to considering every opportunity to bring more people into the fold and align our efforts to advance the recommendations my team works so hard to develop.

To assist us in developing our Office's Annual Work Plan. In addition to attending events like our most recent listening session, we encourage you to watch for our summer survey, which will inform (and potentially populate) our Annual Work Plan, released every August. When the annual survey opens, you can be sure our #ARFU Champions and those who subscribe to our newsletter will know first.

Still wondering, “WTH is ARFU?" Read on for a quick campaign overview.

New Campaign - WTH is #ARFU?

If you haven’t caught on already, WTH stands for "What the Heck" (we decided to keep it PG), and ARFU stands for “Audit Recommendation Follow-Up."

Our “WTH is ARFU?” campaign aims to spark conversations with interested community members about the role of our Office and generate more attention, engagement, and support for our audit recommendations.

Because our Office functions in an oversight rather than administrative role, we rely on the City Administration to implement our audit recommendations to achieve our shared goals of creating more equitable, effective, and efficient City services. Unfortunately, less than half of these recommendations have been implemented in the past ten years.

Additionally, we are surprised by the number of Oaklanders who don’t know about the key role of their City Auditor, whose scope of work includes and prioritizes taking a closer look at the City’s most pressing issues and making recommendations to improve operations. Oakland’s #ARFU Champions push the work forward by taking several key actions. If you’re interested in supporting the work, click the link below to join our growing team of #ARFU Champs today!

Become an #ARFU Champion!

In Case You Missed It [ICYMI]

For those who wanted to attend our December 3rd presentation of the second Semiannual #ARFU Report to City Council but could not, please note that you can catch a recording of the meeting online (see link below). Our presentation begins at the 3:35:12 minute marker.

This report provides the statuses of all open audit recommendations as of June 30, 2024, and summarizes 275 unique recommendations from 44 performance audits dating back to 2014.

This second report reveals that the City Administration has implemented 115, or only 42 percent, of all recommendations. Of the 147 recommendations that remain open, 66 have been partially implemented.

If you’re following the work and are disappointed about the low recommendation implementation rate, this is your call to action. Take a moment to let your elected officials know which recommendations would impact you the most and ask them to dive deeper into our reports.

Watch the Second Semiannual #ARFU Presentation