Report 2012-111 Recommendation 1 Responses

Report 2012-111: California Department of Public Health: It Needs to Improve Accuracy in Accounting and Charging for Compliance Inspections Designed to Reduce Youth Access to Tobacco and It Could Enhance Its Compliance Inspections (Release Date: June 2013)

Recommendation #1 To: Public Health, Department of

To ensure that it can support its labor costs, Public Health should implement a process to accurately track the time its staff spends conducting statewide and local compliance inspections.

60-Day Agency Response

On July 1, 2013, CDPH Food and Drug Branch (FDB) implemented a tracking system to document staff time spent on all of FDB's statewide, local, and federal contract compliance inspection activities. FDB uses the time captured on staff worksheets to allocate labor to the appropriate CALSTARS cost objectives that tie to the funding source. FDB then converts the labor hours for each employee to a percentage of his/her total time for the month and gives a monthly report to Accounting. Accounting uses the report to update the Employee Master File, which allocates labor costs to the appropriate funding source (cost objective). FDB reconciles the CALSTARS summary report to its internal records to verify that Accounting accurately entered the information. If FDB identifies errors, it will issue an expenditure correction document to Accounting. Attachment A is the written procedures FDB provided to staff that detail the new time accounting procedures and Attachment B is a copy of the July 2013 time accounting summary FDB submitted to Accounting.

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

All Recommendations in 2012-111

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.