2017-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 3

30. To ensure that BRN has adequate data to effectively use its resources and manage its workload, it should formally track and monitor the timeliness of its processing of applications by type and the cause of any delays.

32. To ensure that BRN has adequate data to effectively use its resources and manage its workload, it should conduct an analysis no later than June 30, 2015, of its application processing since implementing BreEZe in order to identify the workload capability of each of its units, such as the licensing support unit; to the extent it determines additional resources are necessary, BRN should submit a request for these resources that is appropriately justified.

33. To ensure that BRN continues to process applications within regulatory time frames, it should continue its efforts to refine its business processes to increase efficiency and reduce the amount of time applications are pending its review.

10. To comply with state law and to ensure that it effectively manages its inspections of institutions, the bureau should prioritize its announced and unannounced inspections to focus on those institutions that have a higher risk of noncompliance.

11. To recoup the payment and leave accumulations to which its employees were not entitled, Corrections and Correctional Health Care should reduce the accumulated leave balances of Employee A by 886 hours. If his accumulated leave balances are not sufficient, offset any remaining hours against future accumulations of leave.

13. To recoup the payment and leave accumulations to which its employees were not entitled, Corrections and Correctional Health Care should work with the California Public Employees' Retirement System and attempt to recoup the $22,766 in CTO leave hours Employee B—who retired in April 2015—cashed out but to which he was not entitled.

6. When regional water boards include staff enforcement costs in the penalty actions they issue, the state water board should require that they use a systematic method for tracking the hours staff spend on enforcement activities related to penalty actions and maintain documentary support for these staff enforcement cost calculations.

2. To ensure that it maximizes its ability to generate revenue at all the veterans homes and better cover the costs of providing care to its members, CalVet should analyze its cost-recovery model, including an evaluation of the state laws that limit the amount of revenue that CalVet can collect for the care it provides to its members at the veterans homes.

1. CalVet should fully implement the recommendations from our 2009 report.

2. Veterans Services should develop and implement a plan by December 31, 2015, to routinely analyze and use myCalVet data to identify trends in the services veterans and their families indicate they are most interested in and incorporate the results of such analyses into its outreach efforts.

15. The commission should develop, disseminate, and maintain an incident response plan.

1. To make certain that the research program contributes to the goals of the solar initiative, the commission should conduct a program evaluation before the remaining grant projects are completed.

9. To ensure that state agencies accurately account for their employees' leave benefits, CalHR should establish general parameters and issue guidance to state agencies by January 2015 on how to account for the leave hours for employees who work alternate work week schedules.

11. To ensure that IT projects have the oversight needed to better position them for success, CalTech should require state departments to follow its IT policies, including developing all necessary plans and receiving all required training.

12. To ensure that IT projects have the oversight needed to better position them for success, CalTech should ensure that departments obtain IPO and IV&V services as soon as an IT project is approved. Additionally, CalTech should document key discussions with any department in which the IV&V consultant and the IPO specialist raise significant concerns about a project, and ensure that the respective department responds promptly to, and adequately addresses, the concerns that the IPO specialist and the IV&V consultant raise.

13. To ensure that IT projects have the oversight needed to better position them for success, CalTech should require state departments to appropriately address deficiencies identified in CalTech's approval of any SPRs as conditions that must be met, and to do so according to specified timelines. If the deficiencies are not adequately addressed within the specified timelines, CalTech should take action to suspend the project until the department has either resolved the identified deficiencies or adequately documented its justification for not addressing the deficiencies.

1. By December 2015 CalTech should develop and adopt criteria to guide the type and degree of intervention it will take to prevent IT projects with significant problems from continuing without correction, including when and how IPO analysts should recommend corrective action and escalate issues to CalTech's management.

2. By December 2015 CalTech should develop and adopt criteria to guide the type and degree of intervention it will take to prevent IT projects with significant problems from continuing without correction, including when and what CalTech should require that sponsoring agencies perform as remedial actions, and what sanctions CalTech will impose for noncompliance with these remedial actions.

3. By December 2015 CalTech should develop and adopt criteria to guide the type and degree of intervention it will take to prevent IT projects with significant problems from continuing without correction, including what conditions could trigger CalTech to consider suspending or terminating an IT project.

4. To clarify and reinforce its oversight authority with sponsoring agencies, by December 2015 CalTech should develop a method to formally document and communicate its expectations with the sponsoring agencies whose projects are under CalTech's oversight.

11. To improve the clarity of the security standards, the technology department should develop and regularly provide detailed training on the requirements of the security standards and on best practices for achieving compliance. It should provide these trainings in a variety of locations and formats, including webinars.

37. To ensure that the construction unit complies with the State's procurement laws and policies, General Services should continue its efforts to implement regulations that govern the small business certification process related to defining and enforcing violations of commercially useful function requirements.

9. No later than December 1, 2015, Franchise Tax Board should develop a plan to determine whether the accessibility violations we identified exist on other portions of its online presence that we did not include in the scope of our review. Once this plan is executed, it should correct violations wherever it finds them and do so no later than June 1, 2016.

2. To ensure it can provide effective oversight of labs as state law requires, Laboratory Services should inspect all in-state and out-of-state labs it has licensed every two years.

6. To ensure it can provide effective oversight of labs as state law requires, Laboratory Services should work with Public Health's budget section and other appropriate parties in developing a process to assess the budget act annually and to adjust its fees accordingly. The process should include its management's review and approval of fee adjustments before it posts those fees publicly.

11. To ensure that counties are consistently following up on all match lists, Social Services should remind counties of their responsibility under state regulations to follow up diligently on all match lists. Further, it should work with counties to determine why poor follow-up exists and address those reasons.

8. Developmental Services should review and update its process for collecting on delinquent accounts. This update should include a revision to the policies and procedures manual, training for field agents, and regular management review to ensure consistent adherence to the policy. As part of the update, Developmental Services should clarify when to designate an account as uncollectible.

21. Developmental Services should immediately conduct an audit of the leave accounting system from July 2015 through December 2015 to identify instances in which Porterville charged exempt represented employees working alternative schedules the incorrect number of leave hours for missed days of work.

22. Developmental Services should adjust current employees' leave balances in the leave accounting system to correct any leave not properly charged as identified by this report and by the audit it conducts.

23. By March 1, 2016, Developmental Services should take steps to work with unit 19 to change Developmental Services' current practice and require exempt represented employees to charge leave in accordance with the number of hours they are regularly scheduled to work.

24. Revise its established timekeeping audit procedures to ensure that exempt represented employees correctly charge leave according to the number of hours they are regularly scheduled to work.

25. Developmental Services should train its personnel staff at headquarters and all developmental centers regarding the new policy and accompanying procedures.

18. To better maximize federal reimbursements for the administrative activities program, Health Care Services should, within six months, revise reimbursement rates to authorize claiming units to claim the 75 percent reimbursement rate for translation activities as federal law allows.

20. Should the Legislature implement our recommendation in Chapter 2 to allow claiming units to submit reimbursement claims directly to it, Health Care Services should develop and implement its own outreach functions to ensure that claiming units that do not currently participate understand the benefits and consider participating in the administrative activities program.

23. To ensure that it provides stakeholders with timely access to information regarding the billing option program, Health Care Services should issue the required annual report covering April 2013 to May 2015 by December 2015 as promised.

1. To ensure that the providers receive reimbursement for only valid services, Health Care Services should immediately coordinate with the appropriate counties to recover inappropriate payments to ineligible providers and for services purportedly rendered to deceased beneficiaries.

10. To ensure that the providers receive reimbursement for only valid services, Health Care Services should immediately ensure that Los Angeles County strengthens its provider contract monitoring process, including fully implementing its RATE system to track and respond to provider deficiencies, and that it imposes appropriate responses when warranted, such as withholding payment or suspending or terminating a contract.

33. To improve the coordination between its divisions, branches, and units and ensure that it addresses allegations of fraud in a timely manner, Health Care Services should fully implement the investigations division's recommendations shown in Appendix B. If it chooses not to implement a recommendation, it should document sufficiently the reasons for its decision.

9. To make certain that access to dental services for child beneficiaries is comparable to the access available to the general population in the same geographic areas, Health Care Services should immediately adhere to its monitoring plan.

10. To make certain that access to dental services for child beneficiaries is comparable to the access available to the general population in the same geographic areas, Health Care Services should also compare its results for measuring the percentage of child beneficiaries who had at least one dental visit in the past 12 months with the results from the three surveys conducted by other entities, as its state plan requires.

14. State Hospitals should explore options for tracking the time evaluators spend on each evaluation activity to increase the accuracy of the workload equivalencies it includes in its workload matrix and should implement such options by September 2015.

11. To fulfill its charge to evaluate MHSA programs, the Accountability Commission should undertake the evaluations specified in its implementation plan.

5. The Office of the President should direct all of the universities within the UC system to comply with the recommendations in this audit report. Also, to ensure that its universities are complying with Title IX requirements, the Office of the President should conduct routine Title IX reviews. When conducting these compliance reviews, the Office of the President should determine whether universities have implemented this report's recommendations.

20. To increase its transparency and help ensure that it can justify its spending decisions, the university should make publicly available the amounts of state funding it allocates toward per-student funding, as well as the amounts it or campuses spend for programs that are not directly related to educating students. The university should publicly present the ranges of per-student funding based upon the amount of funding excluded from the formula.

21. To ensure that its rebenching efforts lead to equalized per-student funding among the campuses, the university should include actual enrollment numbers in its rebenching formula.

24. To ensure that its rebenching efforts lead to equalized per-student funding among the campuses, the university should include stakeholders such as students, legislative and executive branch staff, and student groups in future discussions of rebenching to ensure that it considers their viewpoints and to increase transparency regarding its funding decisions.

1. To address the variations in per student funding of its campuses, the university should complete its reexamination of the base budgets to the campuses and implement appropriate changes to its budget process. As part of its reexamination of the base budget, it should:
• Identify the amount of general funds and tuition budget revenues that each campus receives for specific types of students (such as undergraduate, graduate, and health sciences) and explain any differences in the amount provided per student among the campuses.
• Consider factors such as specific research and public service programs at each campus, the higher level of funding provided to health sciences students, historical funding methods that favored graduate students, historical and anticipated future variations in enrollment growth funding, and any other factors applied consistently across campuses.
• After accounting for the factors mentioned above, address any remaining variations in campus funding over a specified period of time.
• Make the results of its reexamination and any related implementation plan available to stakeholders, including the general public.

6. UC Davis should develop a risk-based audit plan to begin periodically reviewing the financial records of master licensees and licensed nurseries to ensure that they are accurately reporting all of their sales of licensed strawberry varieties and paying the university all the royalties it is entitled to. To encourage compliance, UC Davis should notify all master licensees and licensed nurseries that it will begin auditing the sales records of selected licensees.

3. To improve its understanding of regional expenditures, Education should increase the level of detail required in its quarterly expenditure reports. The level of detail should allow Education to select expenditures for review.

4. For regions that have not recently received a federal monitoring review, Education should use the detailed expenditure reports to select a sample of expenditures, request supporting documentation from the regions, and then review the expenditures to determine if they meet applicable federal and state criteria.

5. As part of the reviews based on quarterly reports, Education should verify that regions are using the appropriate accounting codes to classify their expenditures.

11. Once it has addressed the underlying issues with regional accounting, provided direction to regions about which expenditures it will consider administrative, and obtained accurate expenditure data, Education should review its administrative cost goal to ensure that this goal is reasonable given the requirements of the migrant program.

12. To address past federal findings that are not yet resolved, Education should respond as recommended in Appendix B of this report.

13. To determine if the statewide migrant education program is effective, Education should finalize its current evaluation of the program and begin developing the capacity to produce a more robust annual evaluation of the program.

17. To provide stronger leadership with respect to school safety and nondiscrimination laws, Education, with direction from the superintendent of public instruction, should prioritize the review of parent, student, guardian, or interested party appeals to ensure that the EO office follows state regulations by processing appeals more promptly, notifying LEAs of when appeals are filed, and obtaining the investigation files and other documents when reviewing complaint appeals.

21. To ensure that LEAs provide mental health services as required, Education should, on an annual basis, identify LEAs with accumulated balances of mental health funding and analyze whether the LEA has had a corresponding drop in mental health service levels. For all LEAs that Education determines have both an accumulated balance and a corresponding drop in services, Education should follow up with the LEA to determine whether the LEA is meeting its obligations to provide mental health services to students as part of the special education program.

3. To ensure that the state board assesses the merits of pursing federal funding for workforce investment programs in California, it should establish procedures by December 31, 2015, that include, at a minimum, the following:
- The methods it will use to identify federal grant opportunities.
- The factors it will consider in its decisions to pursue or forgo applying for these grants.
- The process by which it will document its analyses of grants and its final decisions to either pursue or forgo grant opportunities.
- A method for ensuring that the process is consistently implemented.

4. To ensure that the State maximizes federal funding opportunities related to workforce investment, EDD and the state board should formalize their collaborative grant-seeking procedures by December 31, 2015, to clearly define their respective roles and responsibilities in the grant-seeking process.

5. To identify ways to better serve veterans in California, the department should assess the success or struggles of veterans within demographic categories in finding employment, such as age, race, or educational attainment, by comparing veterans' performance to that of nonveterans in the same demographic categories and across demographic categories and use this analysis to determine whether specific populations of veterans could be better served through more targeted efforts and to identify best practices for improving employment outcomes for these specific populations. Further, the department should provide the results of this analysis annually, beginning in 2014, to stakeholders, including local workforce agencies, the state workforce board, the interagency council, the Legislature, and the public.

8. To identify and correct any policies, procedures, or practices that may be contributing to avoidable appeals filed by claimants and employers and thereby provide eligible claimants with unemployment benefits in a timelier manner, EDD should do the following: Using the appeals board's data from fiscal year 2013-14, EDD should identify the legal isssues where its determinations are most frequently overturned, and use these data to establish initial performance benchmarks. In addition, similar to the review that EDD's audit and evaluation division performed in 2012, EDD should then review samples of its overturned determinations and the appeals board's decisions on these legal issues to identify trends in the reasons the appeals board cites for overturning EDD's determinations. With this information, EDD should review its policies, practices, and training related to these areas and identify and correct any weaknesses that may be contributing to the overturning of determinations. By April 1, 2015, EDD should report to the Legislature on the results of this review and any changes it plans to make to its determination process.

9. To identify and correct any policies, procedures, or practices that may be contributing to avoidable appeals filed by claimants and employers and thereby provide eligible claimants with unemployment benefits in a timelier manner, EDD should do the following: EDD should use the semiannual data that the appeals board provides to determine whether changes it makes to its process result in reductions in the percentage of its determinations that are overturned on appeal. EDD should also review these data to determine whether it needs to conduct additional reviews of its determinations and the appeals board's decisions to identify additional opportunities for improvement. EDD should report these results to the Legislature annually.

4. As part of an overall strategy to limit the number of calls it receives while still providing timely and effective customer service, the department should use existing data and additional data from the new phone system to gain a better understanding of why people request to speak to an agent. Using this information, the department should further develop strategies and measurable goals related to achieving a reduction in call volumes. For example, to ensure that virtually all calls are able to gain access to the voice response portion of its new phone system, the department should monitor the volume of blocked call attempts and work with its phone system vendor if necessary to increase the system's capacity.

5. To evaluate the effectiveness of its other efforts to provide services to claimants in ways that do not require them to speak to agents, such as Web-Cert and Tele-Cert, the department should periodically summarize and assess the more robust management information available under its new phone system.

4. To assist the state board and other workforce investment partners in the development and implementation of state-specific performance measures, EDD should ensure that it works with the state board to develop procedures for approving the addition of data elements to its Web-based system and for the exchange of data between EDD and the state board.

1. To ensure that its grant-seeking process is effective in considering grant opportunities related to workforce investment, EDD should update its grant identification and analysis procedures by December 31, 2015, to include the following:

- Identification of the appropriate level of management or staff to analyze and document the factors considered in pursuing or forgoing grant opportunities.

- Documentation of grant analyses, including factors considered in pursuing or forgoing grant opportunities.

- Documentation of decisions related to pursuing or forgoing grants.

- A method for ensuring that the process is consistently implemented.

- Training of appropriate management or staff about EDD's grant-seeking process.

2. To ensure that the State maximizes federal funding opportunities related to workforce investment, EDD and the state board should formalize their collaborative grant-seeking procedures by December 31, 2015, to clearly define their respective roles and responsibilities in the grant-seeking process.

24. To ensure that timely information is available for its efforts to identify armed prohibited persons and confiscate their firearms, Justice should manage staff priorities to meet both its statutory deadline for firearms background checks and its internal deadline for initially reviewing potential prohibited persons. Justice should report annually to the Legislature about the backlog of unreviewed potential prohibited persons and what factors have prohibited it from efficiently reviewing these persons.

2. To more clearly demonstrate its case for a new facility, BOE should continue its plans to conduct a study to identify inefficiencies in its current spatial configuration and how its operations could improve with a new consolidated facility.

5. To reduce the licensing program's enforcement cost without compromising the level of increased compliance with the cigarette and tobacco products tax law that the inspection program has produced, the board should reduce the number of annual inspections and reinspections of retailers, distributors, and wholesalers that it conducts each year to reflect changes in the number of licensees that sell cigarette and tobacco products in California. This adjustment should align with the same frequency of inspections that the board followed when it implemented the inspection program, which is 26 percent—or approximately one inspection every four years—of these licensed locations.

7. If FEMA determines that the calculations and claims identified in the Office of Inspector General's audit report were erroneous, Cal EMA should modify the time sheets to track the actual hours that the responding agency works as well as the dates and times that the agency committed to the incident and returned from the incident.

8. If FEMA determines that the calculations and claims identified in the Office of Inspector General's audit report were erroneous, Cal EMA should ensure that the replacement for its current invoicing system can calculate the maximum number of reimbursable personnel hours under both FEMA's policy and the CFAA.

7. To reduce its expenses, the AOC should implement a policy that requires it to conduct a cost-benefit analysis for using temporary workers, contractors, or consultants instead of state employees before employing temporary workers, contractors, or consultants to do the work of AOC employees.

8. To reduce its expenses, the AOC should follow its policies and procedures limiting the period of time it can employ temporary workers, and develop a similar policy to limit the use of contractors to a reasonable period of time but no more than one year.

15. The Judicial Council should develop rules of court that create a separate advisory body, or amend the current advisory committee's responsibilities and composition, that reports directly to the Judicial Council to review the AOC's state operations and local assistance expenditures in detail to ensure they are justified and prudent. This advisory body should be composed of subject matter experts with experience in public and judicial branch finance.

18. To make the AOC's budget more understandable, the Judicial Council should require the AOC to report its budget in a more understandable and transparent manner, and in a manner that readily allows stakeholders and the public to know the full amount of the AOC's spending. Further, the Judicial Council should require the AOC to prepare and make public a high-level summary of how the judicial branch's budget relates to the appropriations from the State's budget.

2. To improve the usefulness of the Judicial Council's semiannual reports until a statutory requirement is enacted, the AOC should work with the Judicial Council to pursue a cost-effective method to provide the semiannual reports in an electronic format that can be read by common database and spreadsheet software products that allow users to readily sort and filter the data, beginning with the semiannual report covering the July 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013, reporting period.

12. The AOC should provide additional training to its staff and the judicial entities on how to conduct procurements in compliance with the judicial contracting manual.

12. By February 2015 the Science Center should provide training to all of its personnel specialists on the number of leave hours employees earn for working on holidays.

21. To ensure that it manages delinquent leases in an effective and timely manner and collects all the amounts owed to it, the commission should develop and adhere to policies and procedures that incorporate the administrative manual’s guidance, including the steps staff should take when a lessee is delinquent, time standards for performing those steps, and a process for consistently tracking the status of delinquent leases between divisions.

4. To ensure that it can comply with state law in the event that it must close parks or reduce park services in the future, the department should improve its methodology for developing individual park unit budgets and determining and tracking park-level costs. Specifically, the department should develop specific time frames and deliverables for the completion of phases two and three of its plan. These time frames should include specific completion dates for each key component of the phases.

6. To ensure that it can comply with state law in the event that it must close parks or reduce park services in the future, the department should improve its methodology for developing individual park unit budgets and determining and tracking park-level costs. Specifically, the department should determine how it will define service levels and measure whether those levels are being met so it can provide budgets for each park unit, as phase three of its process requires.

11. To prevent unauthorized leave buyback transactions, the department should limit access for keying transactions to the payroll system only to authorized personnel staff.

15. To improve the effectiveness of the EPRC, the department should establish a process by March 2014 through which the director's office provides formal direction to the EPRC regarding staffing priorities.

11. Water Resources should require the last official who approves an employee's expense claim for job-required and job-related training to forward that claim to the training division, the division of fiscal services, or both, for a separate review of the employee's training forms and supporting documents before Water Resources reimburses the employee.

2. To better align the maintenance division's allocations with districts' maintenance needs, the Legislature should include language in the Budget Act that requires the maintenance division to develop and implement a budget model for field maintenance by June 30, 2017, that takes into account key indicators of maintenance need, such as traffic volume, climate, service scores, and any other factors the maintenance division deems necessary to ensure that the model adequately considers field maintenance need. Once the model is developed, Caltrans should use it to inform appropriate allocations to the districts.

3. Caltrans should revise the language in its future five-year maintenance plans to accurately describe the method it uses to allocate field maintenance funding to its districts.

4. To ensure that it performs field maintenance work consistently on highways with similar needs, the maintenance division should assess whether districts are using funds in a manner commensurate with indicators of need included in its new budget model.

5. To ensure that it performs field maintenance work consistently on highways with similar needs, the maintenance division should implement the zone-level evaluation of service scores contemplated in the earlier budget model that it abandoned.

6. To ensure that it performs field maintenance work consistently on highways with similar needs, the maintenance division should establish zone-specific service score goals for all of the field maintenance activities it deems critical to ensuring a safe and usable state highway system and require districts to meet those goals for all the zones within their borders.

7. To ensure that it performs field maintenance work consistently on highways with similar needs, the maintenance division should implement the requirements for strategically planning field maintenance work that it previously included in its maintenance manual or develop similar requirements that it believes are feasible and ensure that supervisors plan and schedule field maintenance work based on service scores. Caltrans should require superintendents and regional managers to approve those plans. Caltrans should also require supervisors and superintendents to monitor progress toward improving service scores.

1. To ensure that it collects fair market rents for the SR 710 properties on the State's behalf, Caltrans should, using the fair market rent determinations for all SR 710 properties it recently prepared and excluding those in its affordable rent program, adjust the tenants' rents to fair market after providing them with proper notice.

2. To ensure that it collects fair market rents for the SR 710 properties on the State's behalf, Caltrans should make only limited exceptions to charging fair market rent and document the specific public purpose that is served in any case that it does not charge fair market rent.

40. To pursue alternatives to its management of the SR 710 properties, Caltrans should prepare a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the State would save money by hiring a private vendor to manage the properties. If such savings would occur, Caltrans should seek an exemption under Government Code, Section 19130 (a), to hire a private vendor.

5. To ensure that the decal fee is sufficient to reimburse program costs, Motor Vehicles should periodically perform a full cost analysis of the decal program and update the fee accordingly