Report 2014-120 Recommendation 3 Responses

Report 2014-120: California Public Utilities Commission: It Needs to Improve the Quality of Its Consumer Complaint Data and the Controls Over Its Information Systems (Release Date: April 2015)

Recommendation #3 To: Public Utilities Commission

To ensure that policy makers, enforcement officials, and the general public have access to accurate consumer complaint data in CIMS, the branch should continue to implement its quality management team program component focused on reviewing the categorization of complaints and correcting identified errors.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2021

CPUC has established a Quality Assurance team for training staff and call monitoring to ensure accurate consumer complaint data. The Consumer Affairs Branch produce Quarterly reports regarding consumer complaints that are published on the CPUC's public web site.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

CPUC has not demonstrated that it has addressed this recommendation. Specifically, it has not provided us with sufficient information to show how it reviews the team's categorization of complaints or the team's correction of identified errors.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From November 2020

Due to the loss of IT Resources assigned to higher priority CPUC projects, the timeline for completion has changed. Currently, development progress is at 90% complete. In order to complete the implementation of this recommendation, CPUC needs to finish the CIMS-QA Reports, Testing (unit testing, test scripts, and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)), Training, and User Guide.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2019

Updated 10/14/19 - Partially Implemented.

Due to the loss of IT Resources being assigned to higher priority CPUC projects, the timeline for completion has slipped. New IT Resources are being assigned to the project. A learning curve will be there for these new IT Resources. Development progress is at 57% currently. Remaining is finishing up the programming for the CIMS-QA code, Reports, Testing, UA

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2018

Although the project requirements and design phases were completed in 2017, the lack of IT resources in 2018 resulted in significant delays in automating and improving CIMS quality management processes. Specifically, the CPUC's IT Applications Programming staff only made limited progress in application development between January 2018 and July 2018 as staff resources were reassigned to higher priority CPUC projects. In addition, IT Project Management staff was replaced with new staff in June 2018. As a result of the delays, the contract for vendor resources also expired and the Branch is in the process of securing new vendor resources to complete technical manuals once project development and testing are complete. In August 2018, IT began shifting some IT Applications Program resouces back to the Branch's project and correspondingly estimates that the project will be complete and the automation be in place in July 2019. As of September 30, 2018, the project is on track to meet July 2019 completion.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From November 2017

The Branch's Quality Management Team (QMT) program is on-going. As outlined in the response to Recommendation #4, the QMT team's expertise was utilized in 2017 to staff a ongoing project to automate portions of the quality assurance functions within the Consumer Information Management System (CIMS) database. The Branch was not successful in securing approval for personnel classifications better able to perform the higher level analysis necessary to ensure quality management.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2016

The Branch's Quality Management Team (QMT) program is on-going. As outlined in CPUC's response to Audit Recommendation #4, CAB's multi-year QMT plan has been updated to reflect progress on improvements to the quality assurance processes as well as automation of those processes. A further component of the QMT plan is to pursue resources and approval for personnel classifications better able to perform the higher level analysis necessary to ensure quality management. The appropriate personnel classification for performing such work is a Public Utilities Regulatory Analyst ranging from level 1 to level 3 depending on the complexity of specific case assignments.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Not Fully Implemented

1-Year Agency Response

The Branch's quality management team program has established an on-going program. This program was outlined in CPUC's response to Audit Recommendation #4 a multi-year plan is being developed to improve quality assurance processes and increase automation of those processes.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Pending

CPUC staff indicate that its Quality Management Team project plan will be complete in September 2016.

6-Month Agency Response

Branch has enhanced its technological capability with regard to reviewing case attributes in the quality management team (QMT) process. Specifically, branch has enhanced the data query tools in CIMS to allow for systematic retrieval and review of all attribute coding associated with any case record.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

Branch is continuing ongoing efforts to make its quality management team more effective in ensuring that coding errors are identified and addressed.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2014-120

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.