Summary of Report 98-045

June 1998

Report Number 98-045

Overall Conclusion

The Higher Education Coordinating Board (Agency) needs to enhance some of its processes for managing information agencywide to ensure that customers receive the level of services expected, particularly when they have non-routine data requests. The Agency has controls to ensure that funds are spent for the purposes intended, but in some cases these controls should be more fully utilized.

Key Facts and Findings

• Some areas of information management need improvement: the handling of data programming requests; compliance with statutory reporting deadlines; responding to non-routine data requests; and data collection, classification, and storage. Information management responsibilities at the Agency are becoming more complex all the time because of many factors, such as new reporting responsibilities mandated by the Legislature, changes at the federal level in the way the Agency is required to collect and report student loan information, and an increasing number of non-routine data requests.
  
  
• Twenty-seven of the 40 institutions participating in the Advanced Research and Advanced Technology Programs in the past two funding cycles have not submitted internal audit reports as required by the grant. As a result, the Agency cannot be certain that the institutions have safeguards in place to provide accurate information in compliance with financial and performance requirements. Nine of the 27 institutions have received about $57 million from these programs over the past two cycles (a funding cycle lasts 2.5 years).
  
  
• The Advanced Research and Advanced Technology Programs have limited information on whether specific legislative goals of the programs have been met. Agencywide, tying performance to specific legislative mandates will help to keep the programs better aligned with changing legislative requirements.
  
  
• The Agency does not ensure that Baylor College of Medicine supplies accurate information to demonstrate compliance with contractual requirements regarding the use of state funds. Through a contract with the Agency, Baylor College of Medicine, a private nonprofit corporation, receives state appropriations (approximately $38 million each year for the 1998-1999 biennium) to provide undergraduate physician training for Texas residents.

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