Report 2014-602 Recommendations

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.

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.

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.

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.

To help ensure the independence and objectivity of IPO analysts working in the oversight and consulting division, CalTech should develop a policy outlining expectations for independence and objectivity while performing oversight of IT projects.

To help ensure the independence and objectivity of IPO analysts working in the oversight and consulting division, CalTech should provide regular training regarding maintaining independence while conducting project oversight.

To better track its oversight actions and sponsoring agencies' responses to these actions, CalTech should retain the briefing documents created for the State CIO's portfolio meetings and the project status reports that sponsoring agencies submit while project oversight is ongoing.

To better track its oversight actions and sponsoring agencies' responses to these actions, CalTech should record action items from all portfolio meetings.

To ensure that the sponsoring agencies' project status reports provide a reliable and consistent assessment of an IT project's progress, CalTech should develop and adopt specific standards that describe how to calculate and report the project's current status.

To attract and retain employees with appropriate experience and qualifications to perform IT project oversight, CalTech should continue its efforts to gain approval to modify and use the project manager classification for the IPO analyst role.

To ensure that it provides the appropriate level of oversight for IT projects under development, by December 2015 CalTech should conduct a workload assessment to determine the level of staffing and expertise required for each IT project it oversees.

Using the workload assessment that we recommended CalTech complete by December 2015, CalTech should make decisions to assign staffing to oversee each IT project. This staffing could include contracted IPO consultants in those situations when CalTech staff either are unavailable or lack the expertise needed.

To improve its oversight training, by June 2015 CalTech should continue to implement a consistent and repeatable training plan for IPO analysts, which includes contract management, project assessment, IT systems engineering, and maintaining independence.

By June 2015 CalTech should put in place a system to track IPO analysts' training hours to ensure that all IPO analysts have completed the necessary California Project Management Methodology training curriculum.