Audit Report on the Department of Education’s Special Education Student Information System

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

In 2008, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) contracted with Maximus, Inc. to implement a Special Education Student Information System (SESIS) that would facilitate efficient and reliable information for the Department to handle the administrative requirements associated with the Special Education Program.  The system requires a dynamic workflow process—from the time in which students are referred to Special Education for services, assessment, conferencing, recommendations, placement, and provisions—through to service delivery phases and to meet court-mandated State and Federal reporting requirements.  DOE’s Office of Special Education Initiatives is responsible for establishing policies and procedures for students with disabilities in both public and non-public school settings.  The contract, which started September 1, 2008, is near the end of its initial five-year term expiring on November 1, 2013.  The total cost of the SESIS contract is approximately $55 million.

As of January 24, 2013, DOE has spent a total of $67 million on the contract plus two amendments.  The contract also provided for two additional two-year renewal options (at the DOE’s discretion) with the first renewal not to exceed $5.7 million and the second not to exceed $6.3 million.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

The audit determined that SESIS is not meeting its overall goal, which is to provide its users with an efficient and reliable system that meets court-mandated State and Federal reporting requirements.  Moreover, DOE did not take necessary steps to ensure that the SESIS system and its data are protected and secured.  Our audit also revealed that users are not satisfied with SESIS.  For example, our review identified problems concerning data integrity and system availability as well as timely resolution of technical problems associated with pre-identified bugs¹ and basic user functions in SESIS.

Audit Recommendations

This report makes a total of 17 recommendations. DOE should:

• Immediately perform an on-site review of Maximus’s operations to ensure that Maximus’s policies and procedures comply with DOE directives and contract requirements.
• Review its internet service performance and track its stability, along with the network usage, at various schools to improve upon the SESIS operating environment.
• Actively solicit feedback from SESIS users to identify issues for immediate resolution.
• Establish a special team composed of technical and operational specialists to conduct an extensive review and identification of all data and synchronization deficiencies and immediately correct these issues.
• Make certain that every reported report content or format discrepancy be thoroughly investigated and resolved.
• Address technical issues involving other systems (i.e., ATS² , CAP³ , and SEC⁴), which interact with SESIS.  All interface issues should be investigated, remediated (if required), tested, and tracked for assurance of data accuracy.
• Develop/enhance its SESIS training program to assist users in printing from SESIS.
• Track and investigate each SESIS printing issue for resolution.
• Encourage users to communicate with its Help Desk whenever they encounter a SESIS printing problem to promote efficient use of the system.
• Establish a policy to ensure all new users are trained before they are allowed access to SESIS or any application to avoid misuse of the system and to promote usage efficiency.
• Make improvements to its training program to improve system usability.
• Improve training communications to the user community by developing a plan to improve on its training announcements to SESIS users.
• Make a sustained effort in promoting awareness of its SESIS Help Desk facility to its users;
• Establish and promote a feedback facility for SESIS users in providing DOE with a measure of its Help Desk effectiveness;
• Track and monitor all SESIS issues to detect patterns that would assist DOE in detecting inefficiencies or points of potential problems;
• Establish and promote a facility for SESIS users to submit comments or recommendations to DOE on enhancements, improvements, or general issues related to SESIS; and
• Develop a comprehensive strategy plan to address needed improvements in SESIS training, usage, and support as well as an action plan to remedy the deficiencies currently reported by SESIS users.

DOE Response

In their response, DOE officials stated:

“The findings in this report are in no way a surprise as the timing of the audit practically guaranteed such a result. The timing of the audit was premature and served neither agency’s legitimate interests. The Department sought to persuade the Comptroller of such at the March 19, 2012 entrance conference, and then by way of a formal appeal to the Deputy Comptroller. The audit was premature as SESIS was so new that all planned modules had not yet been developed and rolled out; and, the Department was involved in active litigation on issues having significant overlap with and impact on the subject matter of the pending audit. The Comptroller seemed to think that the Department was claiming that there was a legal bar to the audit. This was not the case. The matter, rather, turned on whether each agency’s resources would be well spent on pursuing an audit of an unfinished data system and whether, ultimately, useful recommendations would result from those efforts.”

If the matter turned on “the unfinished data system” as DOE claims, it is unclear why DOE stated the exact opposite in its March 27, 2012 request for a postponement. In an email accompanying the original request, DOE stated “Per our discussion…at last week’s entrance conference, attached is a letter requesting consideration of a postponement of the SESIS audit, predominately due to active litigation between the NYCDOE and the UFT on issues having significant overlap with and impact on the subject matter of the pending audit. “ The official letter similarly stated that the more critical reason for a postponement was that “the Department is involved in active litigation…” adding that “In light of the pending litigation, an audit review and report regarding SESIS would be inopportune and may interfere with the pending litigation.”  DOE now admits that there was no legal bar to the audit, supporting our decision to proceed.  DOE needs to understand that if in one document they say one thing and then in another they contradict themselves – they lose credibility.  Needless to say we disagree with DOE’s characterization of events.  We have included DOE’s March 27, 2012 request for postponement in Addendum II.

Finally, we note that DOE despite the above comments, did not refute our findings, and in fact apparently considered as valuable our recommendations to fix the SESIS issues.