The North Carolina Education Lottery (NCEL) recently received two prestigious awards. The NCEL earned one for excellence in financial reporting and governmental accounting and also attained the highest form of recognition in the area of quality assurance.

The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) presented the NCEL with an Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Annual Financial Reporting. The award recognizes conformance with the highest standards for preparation of state and local government reports, including creativity, presentation, understandability and reader appeal.

“This is a nationally recognized, impartial review of our financial reporting both to the financial community and, in this case, to the general public,” said director of finance Jim Knight. “We want to make sure we’re transparent.”

The NCEL is the second lottery ever to earn the award and the only lottery to receive the award this year. This latest GFOA award is in addition to the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting presented to the NCEL earlier this year for its comprehensive annual financial report.

The NCEL also recently achieved the status of “Verified” within the North American Association of State & Provincial Lotteries Standards Initiative (NSI) under the Best Practice Quality Assurance of Product Development in the Lottery Industry: Acceptance Testing. The Quality Assurance best practice is intended to provide both lotteries and vendors with simple, documented, and approved methods for building quality into the product development and testing processes. In the long run, these practices result in greater efficiencies while reducing cost and risk. As the highest form of recognition in the area of quality assurance, the attainment of this award represents a significant accomplishment by a government agency and its management.

“Like other lotteries, the NCEL strives to ensure integrity and efficiency in its day-to-day operation. Attaining these milestones contributes immensely to this objective,” said Tom Shaheen, NCEL executive director.  “I am very proud of our staff’s accomplishments.”