State auditors want the Arizona Department of Transportation to comply with purchase and travel policy, conflict of interest requirements and open meeting laws.
The director of the department is promising to act on about two dozen recommendations.
A key topic of the review is a Motor Vehicle Division system that the public uses to access their personal information and pay for services.
Auditors say that in 2019 the Transportation Department learned of a fraud pattern being used to steal money through the system.
But officials failed for years to tell authorities and didn’t take a legally required step to check if there was a cyber breach so the incidents kept going.
Last month the Transportation Department reportedly said the system may have had security issues but did not know if it was hacked.
Roughly $200,000 of public money has not been recovered.
