Report 2012-301 Recommendation 3 Responses

Report 2012-301: Judicial Branch Procurement: Six Superior Courts Generally Complied With the Judicial Branch Contracting Law, but They Could Improve Some Policies and Practices (Release Date: March 2013)

Recommendation #3 To: Administrative Office of the Courts

To ensure accurate reports to the Legislature, the AOC should ensure that its process for extracting data from the courts' common accounting system provides accurate information—including, but not limited to, data describing the item or service procured and data reflecting the amount courts actually paid to vendors—for use in the semiannual report.

60-Day Agency Response

Although the AOC has confidence it has corrected all previously identified programming errors, the AOC is continuing its efforts to ensure that its process for extracting data from the courts' common accounting system provides accurate information. In this regard, the AOC is responsible for the architecture of the courts' common accounting system. Each superior court, however, is responsible for ensuring that the information in the system relating to payments to, and contracts with, the court's vendors is accurate, consistent, and complete.

It is anticipated that the process for extracting data from the courts' common accounting system will result in substantially accurate information for all future semiannual reports, provided that each superior court has put into the system information that is accurate, consistent, and complete. Doug Kauffroath, Senior Manager, AOC Trial Court Administrative Services Office, is the person responsible for the architecture of the courts' common accounting system and for identifying programming errors.

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

Although the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has indicated that it has not yet fully implemented this recommendation, we consider this issue closed for the purpose of our audit report #2012-301. The AOC believes it has corrected the problem and we note that our office will perform future audit work to review the accuracy of the AOC's semi-annual reports to the Legislature.

All Recommendations in 2012-301

Agency responses received after June 2013 are posted verbatim.