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Co-Auditor Training
Currently this is mainly a stub to list things to do and for collecting bits and pieces found on the way.
The Co-Auditor's Job
The Co-Auditors (contains the team list) help the Assurance Team to evaluate the (average) quality of CAcert's Assurances. Their reports should help to locate common problems during Assurances. Ideally this should lead to improvements in Assurer Training and Assurance Procedures and therefore an increased quality level of Assurances.
If you think that you'd like to do this job please apply with the AssuranceOfficer.
Prerequesites
Cited from Brussels Mini-TOP. The only thing I could find, is this complete and current? AFAIK it conforms to current practices.
Terms
Experienced Assurer means has 50 Ep.
Senior Assurer means
- experienced
- has been co-audited
- attended ATE (5 points)
CARS (I guess that's "knows about CARS")
Definition
Co-auditor is
- senior (and experienced)
- active in CAcert in some area
- has been tested and trained by co-auditor
- Test (face to face):
- blank sheet test
- AP, CCA, Handbook, PoN etc
- should know about
- Arbitration concept
- how to build evidence for the Arb
- Triage + Support
- policy group and recent changes
recruited to co-audit programme (is appointed by the Assurance Officer)
Nice to have:
- has been in arbitration
- Good face-to-face capabilities
Misc
- Should the first co-audits be supervised? No.
- No Junior co-auditors for now. We'll see about that later.
- After testing, co-auditor to be proposed to AO.
- How to get the paperwork done? Assurers to enter their co-auditor's email address into fiddle ... If the paperwork is not done, we have to drop the co-auditor.
- Offer EPs for attending an ATE and being co-audited? This was attempted but there isn't the software support. ATE + co-audit together make the most sense.
End citation
Goals
The goals of Co-auditing include:
- To test the individual assurer,
- To collect data on the quality of all assurers,
- To provide the assurer with a boost-up in knowledge and understanding,
- To provide a test-mark for the individual assurer to become a senior assurer.
Process
A co-audited Assurance is similar to an Educated Assurance, but has some additional documentation work afterwards. Also, a Co-Auditor must not assist the co-audited Assurer until the Assurer declares that the Assurance is finished.
- It is recommended to prepare CAP forms including some mistakes in advance, this makes it easier to follow a fixed schedule.
- once you get good at it, you might try letting the Assurer tell you everything to do.
The co-audited Assurance must be announced to the Assurer in advance
what does this mean?
To tell the Assurer (directly before the Assurance) that this will be a co-audited Assurance and there will be mistakes and problematic decisions in the forms and documents. We don't want to get into a situation that someone pulls a stunt on an Assurer, gets caught and then claims that it was only a co-audited Assurance...
- Let the Assurer conduct the Assurance according to your request. If she asks questions which are not unusual during an Assurance answer truthfully.
- be happy and/or apologetic when the mistakes are spotted. This is good!
- If the Assurer states that the Assurance is complete, ask additional questions according to the current campaign (if there are any).
- Note the results and explain errors to the Assurers (if she made any). Of course you may give additional advice, if it was not an outright error, but there are better variants or additional failsafes.
Re-check your CAP form once again to make sure all incorrect data is corrected before returning it to the Assurer! Maybe make a note on the form that it was filled out during a co-audited Assurance.
- The Assurer may normally enter the (corrected!) Assurance into the CAcert website, gaining corresponding experience points.
After the event, enter your results into the Co-Auditing database (if there is one online), or send your results to the AssuranceOfficer.
Unless explicitly requested by the campaign keep your "mistakes" to a level which is not explicit cheating, but may happen when in a hurry, not paying attention or in unusual situations. The goal isn't to slip an outright fraud past a junior assurer, but instead to help us understand and improve our overall quality.
As a rule, there should be no negative consequences (beside more or less strict instructions) for "normal" errors. If there are grave mistakes, and the Assurer does not accept an instruction, you should consider to propose a re-training to the Assurance Officer, or file a corresponding dispute.
If an Assurer tells you that she made a mistake in earlier Assurances, you should propose her to file a dispute herself.
Hints and Tricks
- Make a collection of unusual or expired ID documents.
- keep them together, separate from your normal ID, with assurance forms and other paraphenalia.
check the nature of false or innacurate ID documents in your state. In some places it is illegal to carry them, or to own them. In other places it is not illegal if not conducted as part of a fraud (english common law uses an example that it is OK for a couple to check into a hotel as Mr&Mrs Smith.)
- when getting new ID documents made for whatever purpose, think of ways to make them look a little different. Beards, glasses, hair colour, etc. The trick is to have two IDs that appear to be two different people, then expect some confusion on the part of the Assurer.
- When doing a co-audit, choose a set with: Good, maybe, real dodgy. Expect acceptance of the first, discussion on the second, rejection of the third.
- alternate your choices, especially if the assurers talk amonst each other afterwards
- Do pose as an absent minded non-techie. It helps to be old and fuddy duddy.
- make some deliberate mistakes on the form that are hard to spot. E.g., 01 instead of 10. Best if you fill it out.
- remember that there is also a teaching goal, so consider the gentle approach to explaining how the mistakes are made. This is perhaps the hardest part of co-auditing, teaching without lecturing.
but
- Don't use documents that claim a completely different name.
- such an assurance should cause a dispute to be raised, which is above and beyond the goals.
- you may get into trouble with real life law enforcement!
Related Material
AssuranceQuality: Not exactly on the mark, but some older thoughts on the topic
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