A Financial Review of the Department of Family and Protective Services
July 2004
Report Number 04-044
Overall Conclusion
The Department of Family and Protective Services (Department) accounting systems and processes enable it to report accurate and consistent strategy-level financial statement information to the Legislature and oversight agencies. However, our data analysis identified inconsistencies in the Departments use of its Information Management Protecting Adults and Children in Texas system (IMPACT) that diminish the datas usefulness for making day-to-day management decisions and detecting anomalies in service delivery and related expenditures.
We identified opportunities for the Department to improve its financial processes to better ensure that funds are expended for intended purposes and at contracted rates. Specifically, we found that the Department paid twice for some services, paid some contractors amounts other than the rates stipulated in the contracts, and issued excessive and duplicate payments as a result of processing and programming errors. These problems resulted in overpayments of more than $1 million. The Department has recovered about $400,000 of this amount. In general, however, the Department spends funds in accordance with legislative intent.
Additionally, we noted that the Department has addressed prior findings related to calculating and reporting performance measures and is taking steps to improve the accuracy of its forecasts of future foster care needs.
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