"Are technology systems working for the district’s employees?” OR “Are the district’s employees working for the district’s technology systems?” Because technology systems are increasingly complex and are integrated into nearly all daily instructional and administrative processes, performance issues can create the potential for nearly innumerable internal control risks. Accordingly, it’s critical for executive management to have a healthy respect for how increased levels of complexity are correlated with risk and far-ranging internal control issues. An effective risk mitigation strategy is to invite software vendors to visit the school district to do periodic system checks to verify that the installation is optimized to enhance system performance across all operational areas that interface with various core systems, including finance, student, human resources and payroll systems. It’s also highly recommended that cross-functional teams schedule a field visit to another school district to review their processes and especially the other district’s documentation of procedures, policies and process workflows, in addition to key controls. It's just as important to ensure technology systems are optimized to work for the district’s employees as it is to ensure there are no or minimum interruptions in the availability of technology systems (outside of scheduled maintenance downtime). If management has concerns that there may be medium- to high-levels of potential performance, integration, or internal control issues, the district should consider arranging for an in-depth consulting or management review as soon as possible, because outside experts can greatly accelerate the district's pace in scoping issues and developing remediation plans and road maps to deliver needed improvements, as soon as practical.