Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson is a man on a mission. He wants his office to do all it can to increase state government’s transparency, accountability and integrity, and the audits his office does of state agencies are a part of that effort.

Now he is making audits even more useful by issuing follow-up reports on how well agencies are doing implementing the recommendations auditors include in their initial reports.

It’s a smart move. Too often agencies in and out of state government make big plans to improve what they do and then don’t get very far in putting those plans to work when everyday business gets in the way of change.

Richardson already asks agencies to agree or disagree with each recommendation included in the audit. He also asks that they include a date by which they plan to have proposed changes in place. Most agency heads agree with what auditors suggest, though not always with every recommendation. And most submit reasonable timelines for getting the work done. The new reports measure how well those timelines are being met. They’ll be available to the public on the secretary of state’s website.

Richardson’s office issued its first follow-up report Wednesday, taking a look at how well the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission is doing adopting recommendations from an audit completed in December 2017. The audit itself dealt with HECC’s procurement procedures and made five recommendations, from hiring new staff to better training and cleaning up a backlog of work on procurement contracts and agreements.

While HECC has not completed all the changes suggested, it continues to work to do so, and none has been simply shoved into a closet. That’s good news.

Although no one has said so directly, making the follow-up reports public helps in another way. Surely no agency that’s been under unpleasant scrutiny for the way it operates wants to see a follow-up report that says it isn’t working hard to fix its problems. Richardson’s follow-up reports are likely to cut that to a minimum.