Sarbanes-Oxley

ASQ just successfully completed its first virtual conference,
ASQ’s 2nd Annual Sarbanes-Oxley Conference: Integrated Management Systems in Support of SOX Compliance
The three-day virtual conference was managed by Lisa Stanek, ASQ and Sandy Liebesman. The Integrated Management Systems track was managed by Donna Spencer, Integrated Audits track was managed by Paul Palmes, and the IT Software track was managed by John Walz. 

The forty plus attendees had the advantage of picking and choosing their preferred combination of 1, 2, or all 3 tracks.  The web enabled service allowed the twelve speakers to broadcast and answer attendee’s questions both in real-time and at the end with live discussions.  The benefit to the speakers is their presentations can be replayed to other audiences. Of course the real benefit was the attendee’s reduce conference fees and lack of travel expenses.

This new type of educational interaction is important for newly formed networks and forums that lack a dedicated set of experienced volunteers who normally manage face-to-face ASQ conferences.  

Posted by John Walz at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Follow-up on my 21-July-06 blog titled “Twenty Internal Control Principles for SOX”.

The Oct06 issue of Internal Auditor, has an article from Larry E. Rittenberg, COSO Chairman.  He provides background to COSO’s Internal Control over Financial Reporting – Gudiance for Smaller Public Companies, Executive Summary and the Internal Control “process”. 

The Chairman reminded us that the small business COSO Internal Control document is intended to address the unique needs of the financial reporting objective. However, many of the 20 principles and their attributes apply to all three control objectives: financial reporting, compliance, and operations, for both large and small companies.

The view of many in ASQ, is quality and environmental managers and engineers manage the internal business process controls for achievement of the company’s Operational Objectives. Thus these COSO Principles should have a primary importance when working business processes with Executives and / or the Finance / Accounting departments.

Posted by John Walz at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)