AUDIT COMMITTEE SUMMARY
September 15, 2015
Audit of the Department of Human Services Contract Compliance and
Monitoring of the San Antonio Education Partnership
Report Issued August 6, 2015
Background
The Department of Human Services (DHS) contracts with the San Antonio Education Partnership (SAEP) to close the college graduation gap in San Antonio by assisting students with graduating from high school, enrolling in college, and receiving a college degree and/or certificate, leading to the creation of a more educated citizenry to improve the City’s future economic prospects. DHS financially supports SAEP to operate cafécollege, administer a scholarship program, and provide outreach services to students in twenty-five local high schools. DHS entered into two professional services contracts with SAEP for these services for a total of $3,055,813 for fiscal year (FY) 2014.
SAEP operates cafécollege which serves as a “one-stop-shop” for assistance with college admission and applications, financial aid guidance, career exploration, SAT and ACT preparation, and outreach. SAEP also administers the City’s scholarship program. Under this program, SAEP distributes scholarships to qualified students that can be used at any one of twelve local colleges and universities.
Audit Objective
Determine if the City and the San Antonio Education Partnership are in compliance with key terms of the contract and if DHS’s monitoring of the contract is effective.
Audit Scope & Methodology
The audit scope was FY 2014 for performance measures and Q1 FY 2015 for monitoring. We also used high school class data for calendar years 2009 through 2014 for trending analysis. We researched performance measure practices from regional and national organizations as well as municipalities with programs similar to cafécollege. We also interviewed staff, reviewed contracts and reports, analyzed data, conducted inventories, performed tests of data and performance measures, and reviewed contract monitoring activities.
Audit Conclusions
Yes, the City and SAEP are in compliance with key terms of the contract and DHS’s monitoring of the contract is effective. However, we noted areas where significant improvement might be made in reporting performance of the programs and in maintenance of city-owned equipment used in the cafécollege program.
Specifically, we noted:
• Neither security nor maintenance procedures have been applied to city-owned computers at cafécollege since initial setup in 2010. Additionally, at least one SAEP-owned computer has a connection to the City’s network and data is stored or backed up to the City’s datacenter.
• The performance measures currently being reported by SAEP overlap with one another and do not provide any indication of the effectiveness of SAEP’s cafécollege and outreach programs, or the effectiveness of the City’s scholarship program which SAEP administers.
We recommended that the DHS Director:
• Work with ITSD to ensure that the installation of new computers in the cafécollege lab provides for the on-going maintenance and security of all computers, servers, and related software and operating systems. Also, ensure that connections between computers owned by SAEP and the City are appropriate and that adequate security controls have been implemented.
• Work with SAEP to define better measures for reporting outreach activities and performance.
DHS management concurred with our recommendations and developed a positive corrective action plan.