Internal audit: Knox County Clerk and Master data migration to TNCIS largely successful, minor inconsistencies found

Internal Audit presented results June 22 concluding that Knox County’s migration of historical Clerk and Master records from legacy systems into the Tennessee Court Information System was successful and preserved confidentiality protections.

Nathan Wallace of Internal Audit told the Audit Committee the performance audit tested a representative sample of 272 cases from a population of 261,954 migrated records covering the period Jan. 30, 2002, through Jan. 30, 2026. ‘‘All sampled cases were successfully identified within TENSIS,’’ Wallace said, and audit work did not find evidence of missing records or material loss of information.

The audit identified 12 sampled cases with minor data inconsistencies. Six records showed additional rule-docket entries in TENSIS that were not present in JIMS; Internal Audit said those additions appeared system-generated during conversion and that it found no evidence that historical docket entries were removed or overwritten. Six additional sampled cases showed differences in confidentiality settings; crucially, auditors said they did not find any case in which confidential information became publicly accessible as a result of the migration.

‘‘Because these entries serve as the official history of court activity, understanding why additional entries appeared is important,’’ Wallace said. Internal Audit recommended the Clerk of the Master’s Office work with Knox County IT (KCIT) and the local government corporation (LGC) that provides the TENSIS platform to identify and document the source of differences and determine their cause.

Scott Groswold, Knox County Clerk and Master, thanked the audit team and partner agencies and described the work as necessary to modernize court records and protect files from environmental risks. ‘‘We are setting it up for the next step,’’ Groswold said, noting the county’s role in forthcoming statewide case-management improvements and urging continued investment in technology and staffing to preserve records and improve operations.

Internal Audit also reviewed adoption records with additional scrutiny: auditors tested 7,254 adoption cases in JIMS and reported no significant issue related to migration of adoption records into TENSIS, while identifying an opportunity to formalize standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training. The report recommended formal SOPs for data entry expectations, case classification, confidentiality designations and records management to reduce historical inconsistencies.

Management formally concurred with the findings and described the additional rule-docket entries as system-generated conversion artifacts that did not materially impact case-management data. Internal Audit closed the migration recommendation after the Clerk and Master’s office, KCIT and LGC investigated the differences and provided responses to the auditor’s inquiries.

Next steps noted in the meeting: the Clerk and Master’s Office, KCIT and LGC will document the conversion behavior that produced additional rule-docket entries and finalize SOPs and staff training for TENSIS data entry and confidentiality handling. The report will be used to inform future county and state-level case-management transitions.

The Audit Committee had no further action on the migration item beyond tracking management’s response and recommended follow-up.