31 States Represented at PROC Summit

State Board Report

August 2013

The NASBA Peer Review Oversight Committee Summit (PROC), held July 10 in Nashville, drew 66 attendees representing 31 states. With only 23 states currently having an active or planned PROC, the Summit’s attendance indicated to NASBA’s Compliance Assurance Committee (CAC) that more State Boards are interested in establishing PROCs. One of the CAC’s goals is to have a PROC for every State Board, and to have those programs operated with some consistency, CAC Chair Janice Wilson (OK) stated.

The CAC has worked with NASBA staff to create a PROC Resources page on nasba.org that includes two educational training videos with which Boards can launch a PROC (“First Steps” and “PROC Organization”), with three more (“Recruiting and Selecting Members,” “Managing the Process” and “Documentation & Reporting”) scheduled to be completed and on the site by late fall. The site also has a repository of Annual PROC Reports to State Boards, as well as model checklists, report templates, a sample confidentiality agreement for PROC members, a sample PROC application, and a sample oversight agreement between Boards and peer review administering agencies.

The Summit’s keynote speaker was AICPA Vice President of Ethics and Practice Quality James Brackens, who provided an overview of the AICPA’s peer review program, stressing the importance of uniformity and transparency in the administration and oversight of the program. Breakout sessions on “Starting from Scratch” and “Lessons Learned” allowed the meeting’s participants to exchange information on how peer review programs operate and are monitored in their states. Two topics that drew considerable discussion were the cross-referencing of State Board records with those of administering entities, to ensure no firm that is required to be peer reviewed is falling through the cracks, and how State Boards should handle firms with failed peer review reports. The CAC expects to be developing best practices for both these situations.