2022-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 1

1. Take appropriate corrective action against the district engineer and the supervisors for their participation in or failure to address the conflict of interest.

4. To avoid the appearance of inappropriate relationships, the CPUC should adopt a policy to prohibit commissioners from accepting gifts from regulated utilities and energy companies and free travel from organizations with significant ties to regulated utilities and other parties with financial interests in CPUC proceedings.

13. The CPUC should update its regulations to require parties joining a proceeding by filing a protest or response to an application or petition, or by filing comments in response to a rulemaking proceeding to fully disclose their interests in the proceeding.

2. To ensure long-term efficient and effective delivery of projects, the division, in its planned implementation of its new project management system in July 2017, should ensure that the project management system can centrally track and extract all data regarding project status, including time delays, cost overages, and the reasons for each.

3. To ensure long-term efficient and effective delivery of projects, the division, in its planned implementation of its new project management system in July 2017, should track the reasons that projects are pending to identify its true backlog of projects. In doing so, it should develop a process to follow up on those projects that are pending to ensure that they are not on hold unnecessarily and are appropriately moving forward.

4. To ensure long-term efficient and effective delivery of projects, the division, in its planned implementation of its new project management system in July 2017, should, at least annually, use the centrally tracked data to identify common themes in the causes for project delays and cost overages and develop solutions to address these issues. Further, it should report the results of its review to General Services' executive management.

5. Until the division implements its planned project management system, it should, by September 2016, develop a process to, at a minimum, identify project status and reasons for project delays as well as cost overages. Using these data, the division should modify its project management processes to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of projects.

6. The division should develop and implement a process for preparing reasonable time frames and cost estimates for its projects within the building management branch. To better inform the development of this process, the division should evaluate the branch's structure, which should include a staffing analysis, to determine whether it is effectively organized and whether it should add cost estimator positions.

7. To ensure that client agencies are paying equitable rates, by December 2016 General Services should develop and implement a strategy for allocating its administrative costs equally among all the projects it completes for client agencies, including those portions outsourced to private firms.

8. To ensure that the project management branch charges its client agencies a competitive hourly rate, by December 2016 and every two years thereafter, the division should conduct a rate analysis that fully accounts for differences between the project management branch's rate and private firms' rates. If it finds that the rates are not competitive, the division should identify and implement strategies to ensure that the project management branch's rates are as competitive as they can be with those of its private firm counterparts. Further, the division should explore and implement any other reasonable methods to ensure that it is delivering projects as cost effectively as possible.

10. To improve its communication with client agencies, the division should develop a process for providing periodic detailed bills and invoices to client agencies clearly describing the work for which it is charging.

11. To effectively evaluate the performance of its branches in delivering projects, the division should develop meaningful goals and objectives and a method of measuring its success in achieving them as part of its strategic plan that is focused on ensuring that projects are delivered on time and within budgeted cost estimates.

12. To ensure that its project management staff are adequately trained and have the information necessary to deliver projects as efficiently and effectively as possible, the division should conduct a comprehensive survey every other year of all of its client agencies to inform necessary improvements to its processes and training program and, in the interest of transparency, make the survey results public.

30. To improve the oversight of psychotropic medications prescribed to foster children, Social Services should collaborate with the counties and other relevant stakeholders—including Health Care Services, as necessary—to develop and implement a reasonable oversight structure that ensures the coordination of the State's and counties' various oversight mechanisms as well as the accuracy and completeness of the information in Social Services' data system. This structure should include at least the items specified in the recommendation in the audit report.

5. To ensure that in-home respite vendors are providing quality services and that vendors are adhering to state requirements, DDS should issue regulations requiring regional centers to conduct periodic and ongoing reviews of vendors' programs, employees, and consumer records.

1. To meet its commitment to California residents, the university should replace its "compare favorably" policy with a new admission standard for nonresident applicants that reflects the intent of the Master Plan. The admission standard should require campuses to admit only nonresidents with admissions credentials that place them in the upper half of the residents it admits.

2. To meet its commitment to California residents, the university should amend its referral process by taking steps to increase the likelihood that referred residents ultimately enroll.

3. To ensure that campuses' interpretations of admission standards do not adversely impact residents, the university should implement a thorough process to annually evaluate the qualifications of students who apply and students who are admitted. These evaluations should highlight instances when campuses admit nonresidents who are less qualified than residents and should include corrective action steps. Moreover, this evaluation should include resident and nonresident undergraduate enrollment in majors at each campus. The university should make the results of this evaluation—including details of the academic qualifications of students who applied and who were admitted—publicly available.

8. To ensure the reasonableness of the compensation the university pays its executives, it should include—to the extent possible— all items of compensation when setting or adjusting salaries and benefits, when conducting surveys and studies, and when comparing the compensation packages of its executives to those in similar positions outside the university.

10. To improve the transparency and timeliness of its annual compensation report, the university should streamline the process it uses to prepare the report so it can be issued by April of each year.

12. To maximize the savings and new revenue from the Working Smarter initiative and ensure that the university uses them for its academic and research missions, the Office of the President should immediately require that the campuses fully participate in all projects unless they can provide compelling evidence demonstrating a harmful effect.

13. To maximize the savings and new revenue from the Working Smarter initiative and ensure that the university uses them for its academic and research missions, the Office of the President should, by June 30, 2016, to the extent possible, implement a process to centrally direct these funds to ensure that campuses use them to support the core academic and research missions of the university.

14. To maximize the savings and new revenue from the Working Smarter initiative and ensure that the university uses them for its academic and research missions, the Office of the President should ensure that it substantiates that projects are actually generating savings and new revenue and that it can demonstrate how the university uses these funds.

15. To ensure that its recruiting efforts benefit residents, the university should prioritize recruiting residents over nonresidents. In particular, the university should focus its recruiting efforts broadly to ensure that it effectively recruits resident underrepresented minorities. For example, the university could establish a limit on the amount of funds it dedicates to nonresident recruiting. Further, it should develop a process to better track its nonresident and resident recruiting expenditures.

16. To determine if the campuses are using funds to further the goals of the University of California system and the Legislature, the Office of the President should begin regularly monitoring and analyzing how campuses are using both state funds and nonresident supplemental tuition. If, after the close of the fiscal year, the Office of the President determines that campuses are not using state funds and/or nonresident supplemental tuition in accordance with those goals, the Office of the President should take steps to correct the campuses' spending decisions as soon as possible.

17. To ensure that it spends state funds prudently for programs that do not directly relate to educating students, the university should track spending from state funds for programs that do not relate to educating students.

18. To ensure that it spends state funds prudently for programs that do not directly relate to educating students, the university should reevaluate these programs each year to determine whether they continue to be necessary to fulfill the university's mission.

19. To ensure that it spends state funds prudently for programs that do not directly relate to educating students, the university should explore whether the programs could be supported with alternate revenue sources.

22. To ensure that its rebenching efforts lead to equalized per-student funding among the campuses, the university should adopt a methodology that it can use, at least every three to five years, to update its weighting system to ensure the weight factors take into account campuses' actual costs of instruction, using the cost study that we recommend in Chapter 1 and other revenue sources if necessary.

23. To ensure that its rebenching efforts lead to equalized per-student funding among the campuses, the university should exclude from its rebenching calculation all state funding it uses for programs that do not directly relate to educating students. The university should exclude these programs only after it has evaluated them in accordance with the recommendation we made previously.

3. To ensure that all LEAs comply with federal special education requirements, Education should require them to include directly in a student's IEP document reasons for any changes to student placement or services.

8. To enable it to review additional areas of its special education program for quality assurance, Education should collect information about the frequency of the provision of each service contained in all students' IEPs. Education should then use this information to annually review the frequency of mental health services and follow up with SELPAs when it observes a significant reduction in the frequency of services.

9. To ensure that LEAs comply with federal and state requirements, Education should require all LEAs to use the IEP document to communicate the rationale for residential treatment and any potential harmful effects of such placement.

18. Education should analyze and report to the Legislature, by May 30, 2016, on the outcomes for students receiving mental health services statewide, including outcomes across the six performance indicators we identified, in order to demonstrate whether those services are effective. Once it has reported this statewide information, Education should provide each LEA throughout the State a report regarding the outcomes for the students the LEA served.

20. To ensure that the State knows the amount LEAs spend to provide mental health services for student IEPs, before the start of the 2017-18 fiscal year, Education should develop, and require all LEAs to follow, an accounting methodology to track and report expenditures related to special education mental health services.

29. To ensure that the State provides special education and related services to all eligible students, Education should investigate the difference between the estimated number of school aged children statewide who have a severe emotional disturbance and the number receiving mental health services through an IEP and determine the reason for such a discrepancy. Education should then take any steps necessary to assist LEAs in identifying and providing services to children who are severely emotionally disturbed.

11. As the Legislature considers creating a public program for shared gang database oversight and accountability, Justice should guide the board and the committee to identify and address the shortcomings that exist in CalGang's current operations and oversight. The guidance Justice provides to the board and the committee should address, but not be limited to, instructing user agencies that use CalGang to complete a comprehensive review of all the gangs documented in CalGang to determine if they meet the necessary requirements for inclusion and to purge from CalGang any groups that do not meet the requirements. Justice should guide the board and the committee to ensure that user agencies complete this review in phases, with the final phase to be completed by June 30, 2018.

12. As the Legislature considers creating a public program for shared gang database oversight and accountability, Justice should guide the board and the committee to identify and address the shortcomings that exist in CalGang's current operations and oversight. The guidance Justice provides to the board and the committee should address, but not be limited to, instructing all user agencies to complete a comprehensive review of the records in CalGang to determine if the user agencies have adequate support for the criteria associated with all the individuals they have entered as gang members. If the user agencies do not have adequate support, they should immediately purge the criteria—and, if necessary, the individuals—from CalGang. In addition, the user agencies should ensure that all the fields in each CalGang record are accurate. Justice should guide the board and the committee to ensure that user agencies complete this review in phases, with the final phase to be completed by September 30, 2019.

2. Unless the Legislature directs the board to eliminate the compliance fund's excess fund balance within a time frame of more than a year, the board should eliminate the excess fund balance by June 30, 2017 by using it to offset the licensing program's annual funding shortfall. The board should also limit the fund's future balance to no more than two months' worth of licensing program expenditures.