2013-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 3

4. The university should work through the regulatory process to develop stronger regulations governing paid leaves of absence for management personnel. The improved regulations should include specific eligibility criteria, time restrictions, and provisions designed to protect the university from financial loss if an employee fails to render service to the university following a leave. For example, the regulations should require all employees applying for a paid leave of absence to submit a bond that would indemnify the university if the employee fails to render service to the university following a leave of absence. The university should also maintain appropriate documentation supporting any leaves of absence it grants. Finally, the board should establish a policy on the extent to which it wants to be informed of such leaves of absence for management personnel.

6. The university should continue to work with California Faculty Association representatives during the collective bargaining process to strengthen its dual-employment policy by imposing disclosure and approval requirements for faculty. It should also impose similar requirements for other employees, including management personnel. If the university believes it needs a statutory change to facilitate its efforts, it should seek it.

1. To ensure that campuses employ consistent search processes and develop appropriate policies, the university should issue systemwide guidance on the hiring process for management personnel. In developing this guidance, the university should direct campuses to develop hiring policies for management personnel that address key steps to establish consistency among searches and to ensure that searches are conducted in a fair and equitable manner.

2. To ensure that campuses employ consistent search processes and develop appropriate policies, the university should issue systemwide guidance on the hiring process for management personnel. In developing this guidance, the university should encourage campuses to identify alternatives to broaden the perspective of search committees and increase the reach of the search for management personnel positions. For instance, campuses could appoint women and minorities to search committees lacking diversity. Additionally, to ensure that it is meeting its responsibilities under federal regulations, the university should provide guidance to campuses on special efforts to ensure that women and minorities have equal opportunity to serve on search committees.

1. The university should revise its travel policy to establish defined maximum limits for reimbursing the costs of lodging and to establish controls that allow for exceptions to such limits only under specific circumstances.

6. To ensure that the campus financial information published by the Office of the President can be better evaluated by interested stakeholders, the university should disclose instances in which campuses subsidize auxiliary enterprises with revenues from other funding sources and should disclose the sources of that funding.

7. To improve the transparency of its expenses, the university should identify more specific categories for expenses that are recorded under the Miscellaneous Services accounting code and should implement object codes that account for these expenses in more detail.

4. To make its financial solvency reviews more efficient and reduce the risk of errors, Health Care Services should coordinate with Managed Health Care when analyzing local initiatives' consolidated financial reports.

3. To promote fairness and to obtain the best value for the State, Public Health should demonstrate its compliance with General Services' policies and procedures. Specifically, in its requests for offer, it should provide potential suppliers with the criteria and points that it will use to evaluate their offers.

1. To ensure that it is aware of and can appropriately react to changes in the number of abandoned babies, Social Services should work with the Department of Public Health and county agencies to gain access to the most accurate and complete statistics on abandoned babies.

1. To ensure that the insurance fund makes the most efficient use of the State's limited resources, Social Services should use these claims and expenditure data to determine the annual appropriation amount needed for the insurance fund to meet its anticipated liabilities.

2. To ensure that the insurance fund makes the most efficient use of the State's limited resources, Social Services should establish a written policy or procedures to guide staff on the appropriate methodology to use when calculating these anticipated liabilities.

3. To ensure that the insurance fund makes the most efficient use of the State's limited resources, Social Services should establish an adequate reserve amount for the insurance fund and reevaluate it annually.

10. As part of its instructions related to its outcome review process, Social Services should direct county CWS agencies to include completed internal death reviews in the development of their self-assessments and improvement plans.

10. To minimize costs through the use of telemedicine, Health Care Services should review the effectiveness of telemedicine consultations to better understand how to use telemedicine.

11. To minimize costs through the use of telemedicine, Health Care Services should perform a more comprehensive comparison between the cost of using telemedicine and the cost of traditional consultations, beyond the guarding and transportation costs, so that it can make informed decisions regarding the cost effectiveness of using telemedicine.

8. To ensure that the total amount of overtime worked by custody staff does not unduly reduce their effectiveness and result in unsafe operations, Prison Health Care Services should monitor overtime closely. If its efforts to reduce the number of referrals of inmates to outside specialty services do not reduce the amount of overtime worked by custody staff for the purpose of medical guarding and transportation, Prison Health Care Services should explore other methods of reducing the total amount of overtime worked by custody staff.

3. To ensure that the State is maximizing the use of funds spent on incarcerating inmates, Corrections should communicate to the Department of Personnel Administration§—which is responsible for negotiating labor agreements with employee bargaining units—the cost of allowing any type of leave to be counted as time worked for the purpose of computing overtime compensation.

4. To ensure that the State is maximizing the use of funds spent on incarcerating inmates, Corrections should encourage the Department of Personnel Administration§ to not agree to provisions in bargaining unit agreements that permit any type of leave to be counted as time worked for the purpose of computing overtime compensation.

4. To improve the reliability of employment data contained in CalParole, Corrections should ensure that parole agents correctly follow procedures related to populating the data fields of and maintaining CalParole.

5. Supervisors of parole agents should conduct periodic reviews of parolee files to verify whether employment fields are completed appropriately and whether employment is documented adequately.

4. Corrections should establish a system for monitoring whether psychology staff at the correctional facility, including the chief psychologist, are working during specified hours of duty.

1. To ensure that it has a uniform set of inmate assignment standards, CALPIA should continue its efforts to issue regulations and complete the amendment of Corrections' operations manual. It should then work with Corrections to implement the changes to the inmate assignment criteria and the assignment process when the regulations take effect.

2. CALPIA should maintain the source documentation used in calculating the savings it brings to the State as well as ensure that an adequate secondary review of its calculation occurs.

3. It should also qualify its savings by stating that employment at CALPIA enterprises may be just one of several factors that contribute to the lower recidivism of its inmates.

1. To improve accountability internally and with the public, Caltrans should create and incorporate an analysis of support cost budget variances in its quarterly report to the agency and in its annual report to the Legislature and the governor. The analysis should report on the number of completed projects with budget variances and on the number of open projects for which the estimates at completion predict budget variances. Further, the analysis should report on the overrun and underrun ratios for those projects, and the portions of the variances due to rates and hours. Also, Caltrans should include in its strategic plan a measurable goal for reducing variances.

4. To improve performance metrics related to the support program, Caltrans should continue to explore the use of additional metrics, such as a measure based on a productivity index as described in a March 2011 draft study by the University of California, Davis.

5. To ensure that it monitors the status of projects, Caltrans should implement earned value management throughout its districts in a manner similar to the implementation in the Los Angeles district. To allow for performance evaluation of project work, Caltrans should ensure that these performance metrics are available at the task level for both active and completed projects. Caltrans should instruct districts to aggregate this information for all projects by task level, to better assess the effectiveness and efficiency of support costs by task level. Caltrans should also make available to project managers graphical displays of project cost and schedule performance.

6. To better address costs associated with the support program, Caltrans should ensure that the PRSM system contains strong controls that ensure employees only charge time to projects and phases for which they are assigned.

7. To better address costs associated with the support program, Caltrans should commission an independent study of the costs and benefits of using consultants to address temporary increases in workload and, if the study reveals cost savings, use consultants. To the extent possible, Caltrans should also use temporary staff appointments for temporary increases in workload when consultants are unavailable.

2. Fish and Wildlife should seek recovery of the $595 in lodging and meal reimbursements that were paid to the employee.

3. Fish and Wildlife should provide training to the manager and the employee about state rules for the payment of employee travel expenses.

18. Fish and Game should amend the terms of its leases either to require that the lessee make lease payments to the State or to include specific improvements and repairs of comparable value that the lessee must perform in lieu of making lease payments. In either instance, Fish and Game should include a provision in the lease for payment if the lessee owes money to the State at the end of the lease period. If it decides that future leases should require a lessee to make specific improvements and repairs, Fish and Game should do the following:
• Develop a system to track all pertinent information related to a lessee's cost for improvements and repairs to be credited against the lease.
• Require the supervisor to reconcile payment records at least annually with each lessee to ensure that the State's records are accurate and that the State receives full benefit from leasing the state property.

10. If FEMA determines that the calculations and claims identified in the Office of Inspector General's audit report were erroneous, CAL FIRE should collaborate with Cal EMA to establish a system that calculates the maximum number of reimbursable personnel hours in accordance with both FEMA's policy and the CFAA.

4. To ensure that it does not undervalue certain types of leases, the commission should implement and follow its plan to regularly update its benchmarks for determining rental amounts.

6. To ensure that all of its oil and gas leases have current surety bonds and liability insurance, as required by law and certain lease agreements, the commission should require lessees to provide documentation of their surety bonds and liability insurance. If the commission believes that assessing a monetary penalty will be effective in encouraging lessees to obtain surety bonds or liability insurance, it should seek legislation to provide this authority. Finally, if it obtains this authority, the commission should enforce it.

2. To improve management of its fraud investigations, the department should take the following actions: Formalize the approach used to analyze recycling data for potential fraud and develop criteria for staff to use when deciding whether to refer anomalies for investigation. Because DORIIS will be a central data source for recycling activities once it is implemented, the department should continue with its plan to automate the review of recycling data within DORIIS to identify potential fraud.

3. To improve oversight of grants and ensure that the intended value is received from the grant funds it awards, the department should do the following: For recipients of market development grants that are unable to meet the goals of their grants, maintain contact with grantees after the project is completed to determine if the goals may ultimately be achieved.

5. To comply with WIA requirements and eliminate the State's risk of losing funds, EDD should ensure that it awards rapid-response funding for additional assistance only to local boards or community-based organizations that demonstrate that their local areas experience natural disasters, mass layoffs, plant closings, or other dislocation events when such events substantially increase the number of unemployed individuals.

1. To ensure that it determines savings to the State going forward for strategically sourced contracts, General Services should examine the State's recent purchasing patterns when determining whether to rebid or extend previously strategically sourced contracts and when estimating expected savings. It should subsequently compare the savings it achieves to the expected savings for those contracts.

2. To better use the enforcement tools at its disposal, the division should continue and expand its use of both orders to comply and stop work orders, as defined in its regulations. The division should also develop performance measures to assess the success of any efforts it makes to address safety concerns and reduce the number of uncertified projects.

3. To ensure that it clearly justifies the reasons a project's noted issues merit a particular classification, the division should either modify its current policies regarding classifying types of uncertified projects or develop new policies, including requiring documentation of the rationale behind project-specific classifications. It should use its classifications to prioritize its efforts to follow up on uncertified projects based on risk and to better inform the public regarding the reasons it has not certified projects.

4. To reduce the number of uncertified projects, the division should implement initiatives to follow up with school districts on uncertified projects. Those initiatives should include, at a minimum, regularly sending each district a list of its uncertified projects and assessing the success of the division's follow-up efforts.

5. To ensure it is providing adequate oversight of school district construction projects, the division should develop robust procedures for monitoring inspectors' submission of semi-monthly reports. The division should also maintain all semi-monthly reports in its project files.

6. To ensure it is providing adequate oversight of school district construction projects, the division should develop and document an overall strategy that establishes specific expectations for conducting site visits and monitoring construction. The division should then record and compare its actual visits and monitoring efforts to its planned actions. The division should document explanations for any deviations from its plans.

8. To mitigate risks arising from the relationship between inspectors, school districts, and project managers, the division should develop formal procedures and explicit directions for field engineers to ensure that they establish a presence on project sites and provide adequate oversight of inspectors during construction.

9. To ensure that it approves inspectors prior to the start of project construction, the division should streamline its approval process by reviewing inspectors' workloads and past experience using the data it already maintains.

11. To ensure that it formally monitors inspectors' performance, the division should reestablish a process for evaluating inspectors that provides consistent documentation of performance. The division should make this information accessible to appropriate staff.

13. To better manage its construction oversight and close-out functions, the division should develop measures to assess those functions and it should periodically report the results to the public on its Web site.

14. To address possible staffing problems, the division should use documented workload metrics to perform an assessment of its current staffing levels and determine its staffing needs. It should revisit the field pilot and make necessary changes to reflect its understanding of its current staffing situation.

2. In order to avoid delays in plan review, the division should develop a policy that defines when it will expedite plan review using its statutory authority to contract for additional plan review resources.

6. To appropriately oversee changes to approved plans, the division should develop policies and procedures to ensure that it receives all relevant plan changes.

7. To appropriately oversee changes to approved plans, the division should develop policies and procedures to ensure that it reviews and approves all relevant plan changes before the start of related construction.

1. To ensure that it has the information necessary to track progress in increasing veterans' participation in C&P benefits, and to identify where and how best to focus its outreach and coordination efforts, Veterans Services should require the CVSOs to submit information on the number of claims filed for C&P benefits and information on their outreach activities.

2. As Veterans Services expands its efforts to increase veterans' participation in C&P benefits, it should use veterans' demographic information, such as that available through the U.S. Census Bureau, and the information it plans to obtain from the CVSOs using its SAIM system, to focus its outreach and coordination efforts on those counties with the highest potential for increasing the State's rate of participation in C&P benefits.

3. Veterans Services should continue its efforts to pursue the SAIM system to enable it to monitor the quantity and quality of claims processed by the CVSOs, and ensure it meets legal requirements regarding auditing CVSO workload reports and verifying the appropriateness of college fee waivers. To the extent that Veterans Services is unsuccessful in implementing the SAIM system, the department will need to develop other avenues by which to meet its legal requirements.

4. In order to attract more veterans to the CalVet program, the department should continue working with the Federal Housing Administration and the Ginnie Mae to lower its interest rates on loans.

1. To ensure that it resolves sufficiently its backlog of test claims, incorrect reduction claims, and the boilerplate amendment request, the Commission should work with Finance to seek additional resources to reduce its backlog, including test claims and incorrect reduction claims. In doing so, Commission staff should prioritize its workload and seek efficiencies to the extent possible.

6. To better manage costs of future IT projects, the AOC should disclose full and accurate cost estimates to the Judicial Council, the Legislature, and stakeholders from the beginning of projects.

7. To better manage costs of future IT projects, the AOC should ensure that it has a long-term funding strategy in place before investing significant resources in a project.

6. To make certain that local agencies calculate correctly their average actual hourly rates, if Cal EMA does not believe that it has the statutory authority and resources to audit the average actual hourly rates reported in the local agencies' salary surveys, it should either undertake the necessary steps to obtain both the authority and the necessary resources or obtain statutory authority to request that the State Controller's Office perform the audits.

1. The assistance program should take steps to better gauge its effectiveness. For example, it could measure how long its participants remain in the program and assess the program's impact on any further actions that disciplinary bodies impose on these attorneys. Further, if the assistance program believes that the effectiveness of the program is better measured through other means, it should develop these alternative measures and assess the program's effectiveness in meeting its stated goals.