Report 2020-301 Recommendation 6 Responses

Report 2020-301: Judicial Branch Procurement: Courts Generally Met Procurement Requirements, but Some Need to Improve Their Payment Practices (Release Date: January 2021)

Recommendation #6 To: Superior Court of California, County of Orange

To comply with the requirements of state law, each court should immediately implement policies and procedures for notifying the State Auditor within 10 business days of entering into all contracts with estimated values over $1 million, except those contracts exempted from the notification requirement in state law.

60-Day Agency Response

The Court revised its policy applicable to all Procurement Staff entering contracts into the Court's Contract Management Database System (CMDS K2 System) to include, in addition to all signed contracts, all approved POs in SAP with an Overall Contract Value of more than $1M created without a Court signed contract (e.g., a PO based on a California State LPA that did not require the Court to sign an agreement) so that the Court's CMDS K2 System can be used to send BSA Notices for such POs in the same way that the Court already uses its CMDS K2 System to send BSA Notices for signed contracts. This policy became effective December 1, 2020. Additionally, the Court implemented a new CMDS-BSA Notice Review Process effective March 8, 2021. This new process requires the Procurement Manager, or the Procurement Manager's designee, to confirm weekly that new and revised POs with Overall Contract Values of more than $1M approved in the prior week have been entered into CMDS, along with any signed contracts related to the POs, and the Court's CMDS K2 System has been activated to send the required BSA Notice. A copy of the Court's CMDS-BSA Notice Review Process will be submitted separately.

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

As part of its 60-day response, the court provided documentation of the revised policies and procedures described above. These policies and procedures address our recommendation, and following them should help the court to ensure it fully complies with the notification requirement in state law.

All Recommendations in 2020-301

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.