More “What is an Audit?”

Following on from this post, here are some definitions of an Audit from other sources:

Auditor
Noun
S: (n) hearer, listener, auditor, attender (someone who listens attentively)
S: (n) auditor (a student who attends a course but does not take it for credit)
S: (n) auditor (a qualified accountant who inspects the accounting records and practices of a business or other organization)

Audit (plural audits)
From Latin auditus ‘a hearing’, from audire ‘to hear’.
1. An examination in general.
2. A judicial examination.
3. An independent review and examination of records and activities to assess the adequacy of system controls, to ensure compliance with established policies and operational procedures, and to recommend necessary changes in controls, policies, or procedures
(eg National Assembly audit)
4. (Scientology) Spiritual counseling, which forms the core of Dianetics.

Higher Education Audit
An audit is an independent external evaluation that clarifies whether the quality assurance system meets the objectives, is efficient and fit for its purpose. During an audit, objectives and operating results are not analysed as such. Instead, the audit evaluates the processes used by the higher education institution to control and improve the quality of educational and other activities.

Energy audit
An energy audit is an inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows for energy conservation in a building, process or system to reduce the amount of energy input into the system without negatively affecting the output(s).

Energy audits initially became popular in response to the energy crisis of 1973 and later years. Interest in energy audits has recently increased as a result of growing understanding of human impact upon global warming and climate change.

Auditors of Reality
The Auditors of Reality are fictional godlike beings in Terry Pratchett‘s Discworld series of fantasy novels. They are one of the major recurring villains in the series, although they lack the necessary imagination to be truly evil.

Democratic Audit of Australia

Since 2002 a team at the Australian National University has been conducting Audits to assess Australia’s strengths and weaknesses as a democratic society.

The Audit recognises that democracy is a complex notion, and so applies a detailed set of questions which has already been field-tested in overseas countries.

The values used by the Democratic Audit of Australia as the basis of assessment are:

  • political equality
  • popular control of government
  • civil liberties and human rights
  • the quality of public deliberation

Saint Auditor, Christian martyr of the 4th century.

A Model Museum?

kenmore heat exchange system

Last night, at the suggestion of Megan from the MCA’s registration department, I went along to a talk at the Maritime Museum. The guest speaker was Rebekah Wood, an architect and conservator from the USA, who introduced Kenmore, a historic-house-and-museum in Virginia where she works.

Kenmore makes for an interesting case study in “eco-conservation”. What they’ve done there is of great relevance to registration and conservation professionals – and it connects almost uncannily well to the discussions I was having the other day with Claire, Megan and Melanie at the MCA: how to balance the need to protect yer cultural heritage items, against the increasing pressure to tread more lightly on this planet of ours.
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Join the Plant-in Day!

food forest in progress
[The Artist-as-Family’s Food Forest in progress, as of July 8th, 2010…]

Patrick Jones, Meg Ulman and Zephyr Ulman-Jones work together under the moniker of “The Artist As Family”.

For their contribution to the In the Balance exhibition, they’ve been making an urban “food forest” in the grounds of St Michael’s church in Surry Hills. Check out their blog to see the work in progress, it looks rather lovely!

Tomorrow, Saturday July 10th, they’re having a Plant-in Day. Everyone and anyone is invited to come along and join in, bring something to add to the forest. In this post here, they make some suggestions for what you might like to bring along. (I’ve got some fennel seedlings that have needed planting out for a while now…)

Here’s the info from their callout:

Bring something edible, Cadigal or beneficial (herbs, perennial vegetables, ground-cover foods) to plant on the Food Forest floor between 10am – 4pm on Saturday 10 July.
Make a day of it and bring a picnic to 200 Albion Street, Surry Hills, Sydney.

During the day and into next week, I’ll be trying to assemble a rough list of the Food Forest’s energy expenses, as my first environmental audit case study. Patrick says he has all his receipts in a big pile, so it should be possible (to some extent) to trace the resource consumption involved in the production of the project.

Auditable Events, (number one)…

There’s no shortage of work for a budding auditor to attend to! Megan, one of the registrars at the MCA, just sent me through the following, which starts in under two hours!

3.1 Lessons learned from Kenmore ‘s Geothermal HVAC System, 2007-2010

Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Material NSW Division and Association for Preservation Technology Australia Chapter presents Lessons learned from Kenmore’s Geothermal HVAC System, 2007-2010 with Rebekah Wood, Director of Architectural Restoration, The George Washington Foundation, Fredricksburg , Virginia USA .

This talk gives insights into the challenges of implementing a geothermal heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system at Kenmore, a historic house museum managed by the George Washington Foundation in Virginia , USA . It includes an overview of the system’s components and year-round operations. The talk also reviews the operation of the system over the past three years in order to put into practice a relaxed standard of environmental controls developed for historic house museums in order to safely balance the environmental needs of the historic building, the collections contained within, and the physical comfort of human visitors.

When: 5.30pm for 6pm-7pm, Thursday 8 July
Where: Australian National Maritime Museum, Ground Floor Boardroom, Wharf 7 Building, Pyrmont
Contact: RSVP to http://www.icssydney.com.au/form.php?fid=48
Further information here

UPDATE!
my report on attending this talk is here

Inputs and Outcomes

Meeting the Registration and Conservation Department
[Here I am with Megan, Claire and Melanie, as we brainstorm wildly about what their jobs involve, and the inherent difficulty of balancing safe care of artworks with care of the planet.
-Photo by Mark Booth…]

On Monday, I visited the MCA for my first “departmental consultation”. I met with Claire, Megan and Melanie who work with the museum’s registration and conservation department.

“Registration” is the department that deals with the coming and going, transport, storage and packaging of art: taking stock of things as they enter, inhabit, and leave the museum.

Given that this realm is intimately connected to “imports and exports” (on a micro scale), I figured it was a key node in my Environmental Audit.
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What’s an Audit?

audit definitions diagram july 5 2010

My job, until the end of October, is to carry out an Environmental Audit on the MCA’s exhibition In the Balance: Art for a Changing World.

Being that kind of guy who likes to start from the beginning, my first task, I reckon, is to tackle the thorny question:

“What is an audit?”

Yesterday on the train to from Petersham to the MCA, without having done any prior research on the subject, I drafted up the above diagram.
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Glenn’s Questions

I’m at the very beginnings of my project, Environmental Audit, for the MCA exhibition In the Balance.

Ever keen to get down to business, curator Glenn Barkley sent me a slab of questions to consider. I’ve posted them below, interspersed with my answers. But first, this punchy little quote Glenn sent through from inventor Saul Griffith:

I know very few environmentalists whose heads aren’t firmly up their ass. They are bold-facedly hypocritical and I don’t think the environmentalism movement as we’ve known it is tenable or will survive. Al Gore has done a huge amount to help this cause, but he is the No.1 environmental hypocrite. His house alone uses more energy than an average person uses in all aspects of life, and he flies prodigiously. I don’t think we can buy the argument anymore that you get special dispensation just because what you are doing is worthwhile.

– Saul Griffith from the article “The Inventor’s Dilemma”, New Yorker, May 17, 2010 (some comments on that article here…)
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