Report 2012-118 Recommendation 4 Responses

Report 2012-118: California Public Utilities Commission: Despite Administrative Weaknesses, It Has Generally Awarded Compensation to Intervenors in Accordance With State Law (Release Date: July 2013)

Recommendation #4 To: Public Utilities Commission

To ensure that it has reliable information concerning its compensation decisions for internal and external reporting, the commission should implement procedures to ensure the accuracy of its award database.

1-Year Agency Response

This recommendation has been fully implemented as reported in the 6-month status report.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Fully Implemented

6-Month Agency Response

As of December 1, 2013, the Intervenor Compensation Program database (database) was restructured to track additional intervenor request information and NOI information to permit end-to-end tracking of intervenor participation. Procedures have been implemented to regularly update and verify the accuracy of input data. A copy of the procedures for updating and verifying data has been submitted to aaronf@auditor.ca.gov.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

60-Day Agency Response

The ALJ Division has taken the following steps to ensure the accuracy of its award database:

1. The ALJ Division has compiled more than 1300 intervenor compensation claims and related decisions using information from the Commission's Case Information System, bound volumes of decisions, and hard copy and digitized decision archives. A quality assurance review of this data is currently underway to ensure 100% accuracy.

2. The ALJ Division is restructuring the format of the awards database to include NOI information for more complete "end-to-end" tracking of intervenor participation, and will be implementing the restructured database during the coming months.

3. The ALJ Division added staff to perform quality assurance review of data entered into the database, and is establishing written procedures for performing quality assurance reviews (the draft procedures memo has been submitted to aaronf@auditor.ca.gov).

4. On August 8, 2013, the ALJ Division obtained a copy of corrected database information prepared by the State Auditor and will use this information to cross-check the accuracy of data in the database.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Partially Implemented

All Recommendations in 2012-118

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.