Date: 09/16/2015
Final
Vocational Rehabilitation Audit Results
VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION SERVICES FOR THE BLIND
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01:08 PM -- Vocational Rehabilitation Audit Results
Marisa Neff, Legislative Audit Manager, Office of the State Auditor (OSA), spoke to the committee about her role as one of the co-managers on the performance audit of the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR). Ms. Neff spoke about how OSA does a federal compliance audit of the Colorado Department of Human Services (DHS) as part of its annual financial and compliance audit, which includes testing related to federal grant programs. Ms. Neff continued to discuss how OSA's 2012 statewide audit found significant problems with DVR. Ms. Neff continued to discuss the problems found by the 2012 audit, including problems related to missing eligibility documentation, untimely eligibility determination, and individuals' individualized plans for employment (IPE). Ms. Neff explained that following the 2012 audit, DHS requested a review of DVR by OSA, which lead to the OSA conducting a broad performance audit of DVR in 2013 that examined DVR's operations, financials, and information technology (IT) systems.
Ms. Neff continued with a discussion of the main objectives of the 2013 DVR performance audit, which included:
- assessing whether people who got services were eligible, and whether their services were reasonable and appropriate;
- looking at whether DVR was meeting its purpose to help participants reach their employment goals; and
- looking at whether DVR was being run in a fiscally responsible manner.
Ms. Neff described the contents of the 2013 DVR performance audit report (Attachment A), and spoke about how the audit identified pervasive problems in all aspects of the program. Ms. Neff spoke about the 20 findings identified by OSA following the audit, with an in-depth discussion of OSA's first finding, about whether DVR was meeting its purpose. Ms. Neff highlighted the summary of problems uncovered during the audit and audit findings in the report. Ms. Neff also spoke about the reasons why many of the problems identified by the audit occurred. Ms. Neff also spoke briefly about findings nine and ten, which identified several issues with DVR's wait list and fiscal management process. Ms. Neff discussed OSA's recommendation that DHS improve its oversight of DVR's management and administrative by establishing ongoing monitoring of DVR.
Attachment A - Audit.pdf
Ms. Neff also discussed OSA's procedure to follow up on all recommendations made in the audit until OSA determines that all recommendations have been fully implemented and DVR is in compliance with all federal and state laws. A summary of all of OSA's recommendations and DHS's anticipated implementation date can be found on pages 3 through 11 in the report. Ms. Neff provided the committee with a section of OSA's 2014 statewide audit report (Attachment B), which includes a summary of the implementation status of OSA's recommendations to DVR as of June 30, 2014. Ms. Neff explained that the remainder of the follow up work by OSA is currently ongoing, and the results will be included in the statewide audit report, which will be released next year.
15VocRehab0916AttachB.pdf
Ms. Neff responded to committee questions regarding DVR's use of corporate credit accounts, which is discussed in recommendation eleven; OSA's findings related to DVR's release of individuals from the wait list; how OSA will handle audit follow up work based on DVR's move from DHS to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE); DVR's work to help set individual employment goals; whether a lot of the problems found were due to DVR not following current law, regulations, or policies; and what DVR does with any money leftover from caseload expenditure budgets.