Following up on the SilentWhistle complaint.

I know that our complaint has been forwarded to APS' Internal Audit Department for resolution.

I am curious about the identity of the APS administrator who will field the complaint, and about APS' internal procedure for resolving complaints.

It will difficult since any contact information for the Internal Audit Department is a secret. link
(under "select the department" select "internal audit" and you will find the information that APS is willing to share about the department.)

The thick plottens.

Update; I talked with someone in the APS Internal Audit Department who claimed to be the person to whom the complaints first go. She gave me her email address and I sent her the following email, return receipt requested. The return receipt request is normally ignored by the leadership of the APS who are loathe to creating a record that proves that they are aware of a problem. (it was in fact ignored, although an immediate response was provided)

The email read;

Ma'am,

I have filed a complaint against Winston Brooks which should be on your desk now. SilentWhistle informed me that the complaint had been emailed to you.

the case number is Case ID: ba656791-a44a-a5fe

I would like to know about the process which you will now follow.

Please tell be as much as you can about time lines, and particularly, at what stages in the process will decisions about the complaint be made, what decisions will be made, and by whom.

Please note that I am asking about the process and I am not requesting any specific information about the complaint itself.

I am grateful for your time and attention.

ched macquigg

Further update; I can see from my hit log, that someone from SilentWhistle is reading about this on D6.

And more still; a response from Internal Audits

Mr. MacQuigg –
I have not yet opened your Silent Whistle.
The company that forwards them to the audit department at APS does not put a number on the title, it shows on the subject line after the Silent Whistle is opened.
Therefore, I open them in order of receipt to insure that none are overlooked. I did not want you to have to wait for this reply until I got to your Silent Whistle as there are several and I do not know when yours will turn up. They will all be opened and started today.
I will let you know who your Silent Whistle is forwarded to as soon as I open it and what response date it has.
For now I will walk you through the process. After the Silent Whistle is opened, it will be determined who is best able to deal with the situation. For example, a safety issue is forwarded to Risk Management as well as the supervisor of the area named in the complaint. If it is a Fraud, Waste issue is forwarded to the area affected by the claim, plus the supervisor of that area. The complaint is assigned a response date by the vendor that receives the call/e-mail and it usually is two weeks for the response. Right now I will extend those dates as Winter Break started on Friday for the schools and starts on Wednesday for Administration. Some people are taking extra annual leave and may not be here to work on the issue.
I also place a follow-up date prior to the callback date for the individual who filed the Silent Whistle to either insure timeliness in the response or to extend the response date if necessary so as not to leave the caller waiting without an update.
We also log all contacts and action into a separate log in case there is a malfunction by the vendor so that APS has a record.
Many callers that have complaints that involve personnel issues are not satisfied with answers as we are not permitted to release information from personnel files. In those cases I would recommend direct contact with the supervisor(s) of the specific employee.
Once the issue is resolved to the extent possible, the results are returned to the audit department and we communicate with the caller through the vendor format. We also rotate the responsibility of handling these contacts within the department on a month-to-month basis to insure timeliness in the response from APS, continued familiarity by the audit staff with how to handle the calls, and the opportunity to work on the issues that turn into a major investigation for the audit employee that originally received the issue.
I hope this provides you with an idea of the process.
Please feel free to give me a call if you have questions.

Peg (Margaret) Koshmider Director, Internal Audit
880-3727 Koshmider(at)aps.edu