offboarding - OCTOBER 2025

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Offboarding
Released: October 2025

Download the Full Report here
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​Processes used to offboard an employee can pose security, compliance, and operational risks. Prior audits have found instances of retired or separated employees with access to city systems or retained equipment. This audit assesses whether offboarding guidance and procedures are sufficient to mitigate these risks. 

We made nine recommendations requiring action from Human Resources, AIM, and the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. The recommendations are intended to update offboarding processes and improve notification to promptly revoke employee system access after termination. Standardizing the process should also help to ensure that city-issued equipment and identification and access badges are returned and deactivated or destroyed, better securing city systems and assets. 

We found:

• ​The city’s offboarding process does not ensure that employee access to systems has been terminated and employee-issued equipment has been collected; as a result, the city’s systems could be misused, and laptops, telephones, and Wi-Fi hotspots may not be returned when employees transfer departments or leave.
• The offboarding process is manual and decentralized among multiple agencies that have critical and interdependent roles. 
• ​The city does not require standard documentation to track equipment issuance and return, making it possible that employees have left the city and kept laptops and other issued equipment.