Letter Report on the Audit of the High School Application Processing System (HSAPS)

LETTER REPORT IN BRIEF

The audit objectives were to determine whether the HSAPS operated as intended, whether contract payments were properly monitored as prescribed by Chancellor’s Regulations, and whether HSAPS users were satisfied with the system. 

Department of Education (DOE) representatives indicated that the HSAPS system was no longer being utilized for the high school admission ranking process since upgrading it for administering and unifying the administration of other enrollment processes (such as middle school choice processes, citywide pre-kindergarten admissions, and others) was not feasible.  After contracting for $13.5 million for the HSAPS, DOE developed a new technology system to support the high school admission ranking process as well as the new enrollment processes.  All processes are now administered through the Student Enrollment Management System (SEMS).

We closed this audit and issued this Letter Report because we found that DOE has contracted for approximately $23 million worth of IT services to produce an automated student enrollment and admission tool. The original cost of this product in 2001 was contracted for $3.6 million dollars.  This is a difference of $19.4 million.  Clearly, savings could have been achieved with better planning and coordination.

We brought this to the DOE’s attention so that controls may be enhanced to ensure that similar cost overruns do not occur with SEMS or any other DOE IT system development.