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FINDINGS
OF AN INTERNAL INVESTIGATION REGARDING THE
DISTRICT’S 2008 SUMMER YOUTH PROGRAM
August
12, 2008
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In a letter dated July 30, 2008, Mayor Adrian
M Fenty made a request to the District’s Chief Financial Officer to use
the District’s Contingency Cash Reserve Fund to increase the budget
allocated to the city’s Summer Youth Program by $20.1 million, raising
to $52.4 million the projected cost of the program. This increase came
amid concerns that the program was grappling with a number of serious
operational challenges.
This report details these
challenges that led to this increase, their causes, and strategies to
resolving them in 2008 and learning from them in 2009. The major findings
are:
- Approximately $17 million of the Summer Youth
Program’s $37 million budget increase, covered by supplemental
funding and reprogrammings, was the result of a policy decision to
meet increased demand among District youth in need of a summer job or
enrichment program. - The final budget increase of up to $20 million,
however, was the product of significant mismanagement within the
program, which resulted in errors in the program’s payroll system.
Payroll for the fourth pay period will, for the first time since the
program began, pay less than the maximum allowable hours. - There is little confidence in official time and
attendance data because the time entry system contains significant
data errors, which are the consequence of not having complete and
accurate records of where young people are working and how many hours
they have worked in a pay period. Several factors contributed to this
circumstance. The most significant causes are: - A large number of contracts with host organizations
were not awarded until days before the summer program began,
preventing DOES from notifying youth and their parents of their
designated place of work in advance. - Thousands of registration forms were not entered
into the management system early, compounding the impact of
last-minute contract approvals. - The deployment of a new time and attendance system,
which was to be the basis for payroll, less than a week before the
beginning of the program, leaving little time for testing, training,
or identifying problems in the migration of information from the old
system to the new one. - Broken and poorly executed manual work-around
procedures, which prevented DOES from successfully adapting to their
new time entry system’s problems. - Management safeguards failed to raise warnings or call
for outside help. Managers did not adequately challenge assumptions or
demand their verification with data. Statements and explanations were
too often taken at face value. - DOES did not raise concerns along the way. The agency
did not communicate that a breakdown was imminent, minimized problems,
and offered no strategy for effectively resolving the crisis, even
after it developed. - DOES underestimated the depth and complexity of the
data management problems, even after the payroll crisis emerged. The
organization did not have the expertise or adaptability to diagnose
and start to address systematically the problems. - Several allegations involving fraud and abuse have
been confirmed as true, though likely not systemic or pervasive, based
on OCTO’s most recent analysis of payroll and registration records.
This area requires additional investigation. Nevertheless, it is
likely that a significant amount of has been misdirected, lost or
stolen as a consequences of inadequate policy implementation.
Payroll for the fourth pay
period will, for the first time since the program began, pay less than the
maximum allowable hours. The approach is to: 1) identify and remove from
the system people who are not part of the program at this point, and 2)
ensure that payments reflect the program’s most fundamental parameters
involving pay rates, age limits, and allowable hours. OCTO will continue
to methodically gain control of payroll costs, and conduct a profile
analysis to determine if a disproportionate number of problems concentrate
at particular work sites.
To learn from the
experiences of 2008, this report makes the following recommendations:
1.
Invest in programs that work, stop funding those that do
not, based on a rigorous evaluation of program quality and outcomes.
2.
Maintain a
commitment to providing quality experiences to a large number of District
youth.
3.
Reassess the skills required to run the program, and put the
right people in the right job.
4.
Enforce time entry requirements at host organizations, and
penalize those that fail to comply.
5.
Have job assignment available for youth as they register,
with goal of registering a higher percent of participants before the
program begins, by securing contracts earlier or migrating to multi-year
contracts with providers.
6.
Demand that assumptions are relentlessly challenged, and
train DOES staff how to respond to unexpectedly large workflows.
7.
Eliminate all paper processes and bring the entire summer
program online.
8.
Continually validate information to stop fraud and abuse
before or just after it occurs.
9.
Integrate the debit card with the One Card to assist the
city guard against future abuse.
PURPOSE
At the request of Mayor
Adrian Fenty, this report conveys the findings of an internal
investigation of the 2008 Summer Youth Program. Its objectives are to: 1)
identify the problems associated with the program, 2) describe how and why
they developed, and 3) describe actions underway to ensure they do not
happen again.
SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY
To detail the full extent of
problems related to this year’s Summer Youth Program (SYP), we included
in our review events and decisions that date back to the 2007 SYP. We have
also included pertinent information involving the planning process leading
up to the 2008 program. This context is essential in understanding why
problems emerged and why they persisted.
The timeline and data
included in this report continue up until August 11, 2008, or just after
the end of the fourth pay period. Much of the information obtained for
this report came from an examination of data extracts from the program’s
registration system, time and attendance system, and payment system. We
obtained additional information and insights through interviews and
discussions with staff at the following agencies:
·
Department of Employment Services (DOES)
·
Executive Office of the Mayor (EOM)
·
Office of the City Administrator (OCA)
·
Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP)
·
Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)
·
Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO)
We also conducted interviews
with individuals at host organizations. It should be noted that the
CapStat team has been reviewing the issues surrounding the SYP throughout
the year. This report reflects that research, conducted over several
months, as well as the work conducted since the Mayor’s request for a
formal investigation was made.
THE FLASH POINT
In a letter dated July 30,
2008, Mayor Adrian Fenty made a request to the District’s Chief
Financial Officer to use the District’s Contingency Cash Reserve Fund to
increase the budget allocated to the city’s Summer Youth Program by
$20.1 million, raising to $52.4 million the projected cost of the program.
This amount represents an increase of more than 250% over the program’s
original budget of $14.5 million.
The urgency of this most
recent request, made at risk of not being able to meet payroll for a
workforce of as many as 21,000 young people, understandably raised a
number of serious questions about the program’s management and
operations. It also brought to the surface allegations of waste, fraud,
and abuse.
How could this happen? How
did it happen? And, how will District government resolve the causes of
these problems? The answers required our research to look back more than a
year.
THE PROGRAM AND THE ORGANIZATION SUPPORTING IT
Each year for nearly 30
years, District government has administered a summer jobs program for
teenagers and young adults, ages 14 – 21, who live in the District.
The size of the program has fluctuated over the years, but its
purpose remains the same: provide jobs and enrichment experiences for
young people who may not otherwise find employment or training during the
summer.
sAt one point, the program
employed more than 20,000 young adults. But by 2003, it reached a low
point in size, employing about 5,500 youth for a six-week period.
Beginning in 2004, the program incrementally, though not consistently,
expanded until 2007, when the city provided jobs, training, and enrichment
experiences for more than 12,629 youth. Even with this near-doubling in
size, there was widespread belief among those interviewed that this did
not go far enough in offering opportunities to out-of-work, out-of-school
teenagers and young adults.
The Department of Employment
Services’s Office of Youth Programs manages the Summer Youth Program,
which is also called the Passport-to-Work Program. This office, composed
of more than 40 FTEs including four managers, is responsible for planning
and implementing the program each year. They also administer a much
smaller year-round job training and employment program.
PROGRAM GOALS FOR 2008
Formal preparations for the
2008 SYP program began in November 2007, and planning for it began even
earlier. The objectives driving these efforts had their roots in lessons
learned from the 2007 program. The 2007 program ran for eight weeks (it
was originally scheduled to run for six, but was extended mid-way through
the program), and begin on June 26. The new leadership at DOES, was able
to incorporate several reforms in time for 2007. Most notably they made a
push to increase enrollment after a year of decline in 2006, extend the
program’s length beyond its original end date, and expand the variety of
summer experiences available to youth.
As early as May 2007, before
the program began, DOES made a list of reforms that they had time to
implement for 2007, and others that they planned to implement in 2008.
This list focused largely on increasing program quality and efficiency,
including more job- and life-skills training, online registration, and a
call for greater involvement from the private sector. Later that year,
between July 2007 and the end of the fiscal year, DOES crafted a FY2008
performance plan that set several additional objectives for 2008.
Specifically, their performance plan called for DOES to “increase the
size, duration, and quality of the Summer Youth Employment Program.” The
plan set specific benchmarks of expansion: from 12,629 participants in
2007 to 15,000 participants in 2008 and from a 6-week program to a 10-week
program. To lessen funding pressures, the agency would attempt to secure
more private sector funding. Other
ideas were developed and incorporated into the agency’s planning process
well into 2008. Of all the proposed program improvements for 2008, there
were four that proved critical to the story of how and why events unfolded
as they did. The goals, some proposed by DOES and others by the Mayor and
City Administrator, were to:
1.
Dramatically increase enrollment, so that no young person
needing a summer job or experience would be turned away, no matter when
they registered;
2.
Expand the variety of opportunities, and thus the number of
work sites managed by the program;
3.
Change the payment method from an electronic benefit
transfer (EBT) system to a debit card system, which would allow young
people in the summer program to have quicker access to their money and not
be forced to pay ATM and other bank fees, as they had with the prior
system;
4.
Implement electronic time and attendance, intended to
improve the accuracy of payments and create organizational efficiencies by
eliminating paper records and manual entry.
FINANCES AND BUDGETING
Effective financial planning
for the Summer Youth Program requires accurately forecasting five
variables: 1) the number of young people who register for work; 2) the
ages of these participants (since the maximum hours one is permitted to
work per week varies by age); 3) the hourly pay rate; 4) the length of the
program; and 4) attrition, or the rate at which youth leave the program
voluntarily prior to its official conclusion.
The approved FY2008 budget
contained $24.5 million in funding for Youth Programs at DOES. This sum
includes funding for both DOES’s summer employment, indirect
administrative costs, as well as several other youth-oriented programs,
including the agency’s year-round program as well as agency
indirect/overhead costs for program management. Of this, approximately
$14.5 million was proposed and approved for SYP salaries and contracting
costs.
The sequence and timing of
the budget cycle is essential in explaining subsequent events. The Mayor
submitted his FY2008 budget request on March 23, 2007, prior to when DOES
committed to many major policy goals listed previously. The proposed and
approved budget assumed a 6-week program employing about 11,000 young
people. On May 15, 2007, Council approved the city’s FY2008 budget. Ten
days later, on May 25, President Bush signed into law legislation
increasing the federal minimum wage, which is the basis for the
program’s pay rate. Later in the year, DOES increased their employment
goals to 15,000 young people. The financial impact of these two decisions
led to a supplemental funding request approved by Council on December 18,
2007, that increased by $7 million the approved budget of DOES’s Youth
Program, and increased by $14.5 million the agency’s overall budget.
By the time the program
began in June 2008, funding attributed to the SYP increased from $14.5
million to $21 million. Nevertheless, the increases continued, as the
program’s budget was sufficient for only 15,000 participants. The third
of four budget increases occurred when the Mayor requested a
reprogramming, which Council approved on July 17, 2008, in the amount of
$10.8 million, bringing the SYP program funding to $32.3 million. The
administration attributed this increase to the unanticipated effectiveness
of recruitment and outreach, which resulted in more than 21,000
registrants, higher than the original or revised estimates for the
program.
The most recent and largest
budget increase was requested just two weeks later, in the amount of $20.1
million. This request, which would bring the budget up to $52 million, is
equivalent to the amount required to pay for all the young people who
signed up for the program as if there was perfect attendance. In other
words, this assumed that all the young people who were assigned to a
worksite would be paid for working the maximum allowable hours for the
entire duration of the program. The failures that led to the use of this
assumption in payment and budgeting is the central focus of this report.
REGISTRATION
The effectiveness of
outreach efforts to register young people for the SYP was unprecedented in
the recent history of the program. In 2003, the program employed 5,500; by
2007, enrollment exceeded 12,000. At a CapStat session prior to the 2007
SYP, the Mayor gave direction to DOES to improve their marketing efforts
to reach youth who would not normally enroll in the program. Formal
recruiting began as early as November 2007, when staff from DOES engaged
in outreach and interviewing of college students as they returned to DC
for holiday breaks. It continued throughout the winter and spring, as
staff made efforts to attend community meetings and find other means of
outreach and recruitment.
The effectiveness of
outreach efforts to register young people for the SYP was unprecedented in
the recent history of the program. In 2003, the program employed 5,500; by
2007, enrollment exceeded 12,000. At a CapStat session prior to the 2007
SYP, the Mayor gave direction to DOES to improve their marketing efforts
to reach youth who would not normally enroll in the program. Formal
recruiting began as early as November 2007, when staff from DOES engaged
in outreach and interviewing of college students as they returned to DC
for holiday breaks. It continued throughout the winter and spring, as
staff made efforts to attend community meetings and find other means of
outreach and recruitment.
Predicting the final number
of youth enrolled became a challenge, since the impact of the intensified
outreach efforts was not entirely known and there was no cut-off date for
registration. Staff expected a large number of last-minute enrollees, but
did not foresee how large that group would be. In March and April, DOES
believed that demand among youth people for summer employment would exceed
even the revised targets of 15,000. Because of an aggressive spring
recruitment campaign, DOES estimated that a large number of youth in need
of employment would likely not turn their attention to seeking it out
until the school year wound down. To accommodate this interest, the Mayor
gave direction for DOES to allow any young person who could demonstrate DC
residence to enroll in the program, without artificial registration
deadlines. As late as early
June, DOES senior staff believed that the program’s final registration
would plateau at between 16,000 and 17,000 youth, but they could not be
sure how significant a last-minute surge in registration would be.
Finally, in the second week
of June, the decision was made to include into the Summer Youth Program
summer school students at DCPS who were engaged in educational enrichment.
Youth were not paid to attend school. Rather, they were placed under the
supervision of a program coordinator after the completion of their
classroom work each day, and given work and enrichment assignments that
complemented their academic requirements. The rationale behind this
decision was to eliminate the incentive for a young person to leave summer
school in order to take a paid position in the SYP. By August, DCPS will
have doubled (to 443) the number of students who graduated from their
grade during the summer. The integration of these programs increased
enrollment by an additional 2,300 students.
Both the timing and size of
program registration combined to overwhelm program administration and was
a significant factor that led to disarray later in the program. The
dramatic expansion in the jobs program – nearly doubling it in size in a
single year – proved beyond the organization’s capacity to accommodate
and also execute the program’s core operations.
CONTRACTING AND NOTIFICATION
On March 3, 2008, DOES put
out a solicitation for project proposals from potential summer youth host
organizations. At the time,
the solicitation closing date was April 3, which would have provided ample
time to enter into contracts with the winning responses. In fact, DOES
maintained detailed contracting target deadlines when it began process.
DOES and OCP managers met prior to the solicitation to review language for
compliance with contracting regulations. According to interviews with an
OCP staff member involved in the project, the city received more than 30
proposals in response to the solicitation. The OCP project manager at the
time believed that more time was needed to answer questions raised by
prospective hosts. He then extended the closing date to April 23. Less
than a week after the closing date, the OCP manager assigned to the
contracts retired from government service.
Next came the negotiations
period. During this time,
contracting officials called organizations whose proposals were in the
“competitive range” to discuss possible proposal edits and revisions.
OCP then told the organizations that their “best and final”
proposals were due May 8. Three days prior to this date, a second OCP
employee assigned to the project left, in this case for medical leave. At
the time, she believed that the schedule was consistent with prior years
and on target for completion.
DOES evaluated the submitted
proposals and on May 21 sent a report on the proposal evaluations to OCP.
The following day the contracting office sent back questions about
the report to DOES, and evaluations were re-conducted May 23 – 26.
Contracts were drafted on May 29.
Just prior to finalizing
contracts, however, the OCP manager who was now assigned to the project
believed that errors and inconsistencies existed in the original
solicitation, despite the fact that it had been previously approved.
Since putting out another request would take too much time, OCP
decided to amend the existing solicitation and on May 30, with just over
two weeks left before the program began, discussions were reopened to all
organizations with proposals in the “competitive range.”
This round of discussions
closed on June 2, the “best and final” proposals from these
negotiations were due June 3, and the evaluation of these proposals was
conducted on June 4. By
contrast, the RFP closure date in 2007 was April 20. On June 5, OCP sent
contracts to the organizations with the highest-scored proposals for their
signatures. The number of
contracts sent out on June 5 was based on the amount of money budgeted for
the summer youth host organizations at that time.
On June 6 DOES told OCP that additional funding had been identified
and on June 9 contracts were sent out to additional organizations.
OCP received the first signed contract on June 10, and all 36
contracts had been signed by June 16.
The late completion of
contracts was a critical event. There were 36 contracts identified during
research, totaling more than $10 million and enrolling approximately 6,800
youth, which were finalized between June 10 and June 16. In fact, 8
contracts were awarded on June 16, the first day of the program.
Furthermore, these awards were all made on a contingency basis, meaning
that actual Purchase Orders were not established until a few days later.
Several purchase orders, consequently, were not approved until after the
program started. From DOES’s standpoint, despite a plea by its senior
executives, the process did not move quickly enough.
What makes the contracting
process so significant is that DOES’s ability to assign registrants to
worksites is fundamentally dependent upon it. DOES could only assign youth
to work sites when valid contracts existed with the work site host. If a
large portion of its contracted capacity was tied up in the procurement
process, then a large number of registered youth would remain unassigned
to job sites.
One week prior to the start
of the summer program, approximately 12,000 registered youth had not been
told where to report to work. DOES had prepared form letters to be mailed
out during that week to notify these youth of their assigned location, as
they had been doing previously. As contracts were awarded, kids would be
notified of their placement. For reasons still not known, only about 7,000
letters were actually sent out. Although the Director had been told that
“letters had gone out,” she was not told how many, or more importantly
how many were not, sent out.
Even if all letters had been
sent, there would still be several thousand youth who would be assigned so
late in the process that mailing was not a realistic option. In a last
attempt to reach all the youth still unaware of their assignment, DOES
placed a “robo-call” to inform the young persons and their families of
a website that DOES established where they could find out their work
assignment. Even if this attempt had proven successful, disarray would
have emerged at the start of the program since there were still several
host organizations with unapproved contracts entering the weekend and
there is a clear differential in access to the internet throughout the
city. In short, as the program began, youth did not know where to go to
work, and DOES did not know where to send them.
THE TIME AND ATTENDANCE SYSTEM
Prior to 2008, DOES
maintained a general purpose time and attendance IT system called the
Virtual One Stop. The system worked as follows. During the pay period,
site managers (those supervising youth at their jobs) would record time
and attendance on paper. At the end of each pay period all sites would
submit these paper timesheets to DOES’s Office of Youth Program payroll
office. Worksites sent timesheets to DOES in one of two ways. Hosts either
faxed them into DOES from the site, or the worksite would send the
original timesheets via a courier service arranged by DOES.
The “payroll office” within the Summer Youth Program consisted
of one full-time DOES employee who managed a team of summer youth, to whom
DOES gave the responsibility for entering time for the thousands of fellow
summer youth employees as the basis of their pay.
A manual, remotely collected
time entry system had obvious flaws. It required manual-entry timesheets,
timesheets of varying clarity, required a manual transfer of the document
via fax and courier, and then relied on summer youth to enter time
accurately for a workforce that was roughly one-third the size of the
entire DC government. There were ample possibilities for data errors and
inadequate auditing controls. To alleviate these risks, DOES’s IT Office
set out to replace it with a web-based time and attendance system that
would allow supervisors to enter data electronically at their worksite.
The system would then compile this information in a way that it could be
sent directly to financial institutions as the basis for payment.
What began as a sound policy
decision fell victim to poorly managed execution. DOES designed and began
development of a new time system without sufficiently informing or seeking
guidance from OCTO, the city’s central IT office. This lack of
communication, in hindsight, cut off expertise and resources that would
have ensured the quality of the program and sped up its completion.
The DOES IT office completed
the new application just 2 weeks prior to the start of the SYP. With so
little time for implementation, testing for errors and other bugs was
minimal. Minimal to no testing was provided by OCTO, since they were not
involved in the system’s development until after the program began. Of
equal importance, there was almost no time for training and genuine buy-in
among both DOES’s staff and host organizations. With less than two weeks
left before the SYP began, the DOES Director discussed options on how to
migrate over to the new system with her senior staff and the Office of
Youth Programs. The Director was concerned about the mounting work
required to accommodate the increasing flow of new registrants and host
organizations into the program. The Director pushed off system
implementation for another few days, until after the weekend of June 7 and
8, so that staff could continue enrolling youth into the old system, with
which they were familiar and therefore could more efficiently use.
On Monday, June 9 and
Tuesday, June 10, a week prior to the beginning of summer, DOES’s Youth
Programs Staff were trained on how to use the new time and attendance
application. Training the staff at host organizations and work sites to
use the new system proved more problematic on such short notice. DOES
rolled out daily webinars to train host organizations on the new system.
This was also problematic. The likelihood that these webinars would
actually reach everyone who needed to learn the system was small. Second,
an undermined but sizeable number of sites were not equipped with the
technology to accommodate web-based time entry, and the short notice left
virtually no time for upgrades. Knowing this, DOES maintained their
paper-based system, which would run identically to the old method,
allowing work sites to send in paper attendance forms to be entered into
the new time and attendance application at DOES’s central office.
Inadequate testing and data
verification in this new time entry system proved to be even more damaging
than the lack of training. Based on interviews with DOES managers, it
appears that a significant amount of outdated information was transferred
from the Virtual One Stop system to the new time and attendance
application. For example, some youth registered but were not assigned to a
work site. Youth and work sites from prior years would also show up as
active in 2008. In tests run by OCTO after the program went into crisis,
however, they concluded the system overall was sound. It is still unclear
if reported problems tied back to system design or how the staff used it.
Regardless of this, there was no time to diagnose these issues and make
adjustments prior to the beginning of the program.
THURSDAY JUNE 12: PERCEPTION VERSUS REALITY
On Thursday June 12, 2008,
the Mayor convened a CapStat session to receive a final briefing on the
SYP before the program’s start. CapStat is an accountability program for
reviewing agency performance and providing the Mayor and City
Administrator with accurate data about how effectively programs are
implementing major policies and carrying out their core operations. In
one-hour accountability sessions, the Mayor and City Administrator bring
into one room all executives responsible for improving performance on a
single issue, examine performance data around that issue, and explore ways
to improve government services, as well as make commitments for follow-up
actions.
The session scheduled for
June 12, entitled Summer Readiness,
looked at the status of preparations at four different agencies:
the Department of Parks and Recreation, DOES, DCPS, and OCTO.
In preparation for sessions, the CapStat team provides all
participants with statistics and graphs that highlight performance trends.
The charts for DOES focused on registration, funding, and placement.
At no point in the session
did the severity of the problems emerge.
The DOES portion of the discussion went smoothly.
When the DOES director said job sites would enter students’ time
online, for instance, no questions were asked about job sites’ capacity
to do this or what would happen if the online system failed.
The Director did mention that DOES had plenty of time – a
weekend, Monday, and part of Tuesday – to correct any payroll errors
after the first work week, but did not discuss a plan for mobilizing
employees if any major payroll glitch occurred.
Job placements were not discussed at all.
At one point the City Administrator asked about capacity versus
enrollment, but it was treated as an aside and the discussion quickly
turned to the OneCard.
In part because of the major
increase in enrollment, what DOES conveyed to the Mayor and City
Administrator was a program on the verge of success. More scrutiny should
have been given to DOES by the CapStat team to verify information and
provide enough skeptical pushback to ensure that the Mayor and City
Administrator received an honest appraisal. In retrospect, DOES built a
bigger program on an existing foundation – last year’s successful
program and expansion –which was subsequently found to have reached its
capacity for growth without significant organizational change.
By contrast, the CapStat
team and city executives provided far more scrutiny to the Department of
Parks and Recreation for the same session. The duration of questioning
directed at the DPR Director was nearly twice as long as that given to
DOES. The CapStat team requested direct data extracts of registration
figures for programs, conducted mystery shopping to see if waiting lists
existed for programs, and even sent a representative out unannounced to
outdoor pools to verify the number of life guards present and their names.
Consequently, the toughest discussion of the session centered not on DOES,
but on DPR.
Apparently, DOES leadership
had not pursued a deeper analysis of program structure, performance, and
readiness beyond that offered at the CapStat. This management presumption,
of trusting but not verifying, proved inadequate. The DOES director
reported meeting with her SYP staff every day for 30 days prior to the
program’s start, but took at face value information that her staff
presented. There was even a detailed project plan, replete with deadlines,
milestones, and project phases, loaded into Microsoft Project that planned
nearly every detail of the operation.
Most of the basic facts
surrounding the planning process, which have been described in this
report, were known by the Director. To roll out the program without
crisis, given the information available at the time, would have required
DOES to implement every aspect of its operation flawlessly, demonstrate
extraordinary adaptability, and have many external variables fall into
place. As major problems overwhelmed the program, DOES did not seek the
help it needed. This collective trust in the best-case scenario was in
stark contrast to the events that were about to unfold.
FRIDAY JUNE 13: CHAOS AWAITS
In reality, disarray was
unavoidable by Friday, June 13, the day before the beginning of
orientation and the last business day before the program began. The
individual planning processes described previously collided in a way that
compounded the damage of each by itself. DOES had 17,244 registrants on
record, but by mid-July would have 21,073. DOES
had planned for 14,341 placements and budgeted for 15,000, reflecting an
initial attrition rate of 15%. In fact, the program would place more
than19,000, an initial attrition rate of only 9%. The rush of interest
among young people looking for opportunities then needed to be connected
to a relatively untested time and attendance system that was entirely new
to its users. As planned, every young person was supposed to know their
assigned job placement and location of work before summer began, but due
to late contracts and last-minute enrollments, there were an unknown
number of youth – though certainly in the thousands – who on June 13
had no idea where they should report for duty the following Monday. Over
the next few days, thousands of young people would converge on DOES’s
headquarters on H Street, NE seeking assistance.
JUNE 14 – JUNE 20: THE FIRST WEEK
On Saturday June 14, the
DOES Director went to her H Street offices to pick up materials to bring
to the Convention Center where orientation was about to take place. She
was greeted with the sight of perhaps as many as 1,000 youth lined up
outside DOES’s doors. The young people that came to DOES that Saturday,
then continued to return for the next several days, consisted of those who
were interested in registering for a job, others who had registered
previously but did not know their site assignment, and a few whose
assigned work assignment was nonexistent.
An atmosphere of chaos,
tension, and eventually exhaustion persisted throughout the first several
days, according to those who worked the site. Another theme that emerged
during interviews was a lack of clarity about how to handle the large
numbers. Planned workflows were disregarded, in many cases because they
were neither designed for nor capable of handling the demands of those
first few days. The operation dealt with the problems before it, with
little focus on cause. One worker at H Street captured her observations:
On Monday, June 16, I became
involved in directly working with the youth.
I would receive youth who were: registering, getting work
assignments, and transferring assignments.
There was a line around the building, people had been coming in
through the weekend. There were kids moving all around the first floor.
Once I received an account I
was able to do all the activities. There
were several issues with the IT system, things as basic as scrolling
through work sites. In some
instances I was unable to de-couple a youth from a site to transfer to
another site. I would usually
persevere and get it done, which usually required unlocking by IT; however
I could hear people saying they couldn’t do it, so they would handwrite
a job site for the youth and send them out.
Youth with new job assignments had to
take a letter from DOES that identified them as the summer youth
assigned to the work site. The
printers were malfunctioning, perhaps due to being overworked, so I
witnessed a number of youth being told to write down where they were
supposed to go to and just show up there the next day.Many of the youth had not received
communication from DOES assigning them to a day/time to appear at the
convention center for OneCard and Debit card pick-up.
We were told to write down their names and phone numbers and tell
them that DOES would call and let them know when to show up. I did not
get the sense that someone from DOES was in fact collecting that
information.
Managers were also worried
that they might not have enough worksites to handle the unprecedented
demand for jobs. Just as much a focus of the team was finding or
confirming additional placements at worksites. The vast majority of these
new placements were filled successfully. But, workers did report youth who
were turned away from a site because of overcrowding, were sent to closed
sites, and in a few cases returned multiple times until they found a job.
Some employers adapted to an
unexpected increase in their youth workforce better than others. In some
cases, particularly placements inside District government, the increase
was dramatic. Logistical challenges around finding space and equipment
were common for these agencies, as was the task of creating additional
projects for their summer youth. No program-wide analysis has been
conducted on the extent to which the quality of the experience was diluted
as a result. Anecdotally, though, agency responses varied. It should be
noted that some host organizations felt that the sudden expansion was, in
fact, not a challenge; they had projects that could increase in size
easily. For others, there were difficulties identifying quality work
assignments.
Each evening, beginning on
Saturday and continuing virtually nonstop for the subsequent weeks, a team
of mostly DOES staff would work well into the night and early morning
trying to collect and process the information and forms collected during
the day. Among the registration forms were some that were dated back to
March, April, and May, but for some reason were never entered into the
system, or were initially collected by a third party and not brought to
DOES until mid-June. In other cases, DOES had young people who had
registered, had proof of registration, but were not in the system and were
not referred to a job site. It is unclear if these observations reflected
a broken IT system or an organization that had failed to enter the
registrations that they were given.
On Monday, June 16, and each
day throughout that work week, hundreds of young people continued to come
to H Street for registration and to the Convention Center for orientation.
At orientation, each young person would receive basic workplace training,
financial training, receive a OneCard for identification, and a debit card
for payment. Training occurred in four-hour segments of several hundred
youth per segment to cycle through all registrants. Only the debit cards
for those kids scheduled to attend a particular orientation were available
for dispersal. At the time, this policy was intended to maintain controls
over the deployment of debit cards. But amid the confusion, many youth
went to the wrong orientation session, or none at all. These youth started
their job without a payment mechanism in hand.
At this point, staff from
the Executive Office of the Mayor and Office of the City Administrator
became directly involved in operations, trying to alleviate the workload,
whether to provide management support, data analysis, or simply provide
additional bodies to staff intake stations. The involvement of the OCA and
EOM remains with the program to this day, and in the past two weeks has
assumed an increasing degree of control.
The primary focus of those
working at H Street was to move as many kids as possible through the
building. Amid the disarray and need to work efficiently, standard
procedures were replaced by ad hoc ones, which might have varied from
person to person. Electronic data capture was replaced with handwritten
notes, not always recorded on proper forms, but in some cases written on
any sheet of paper that was available. There is little evidence to suggest
that these lists were ever compiled and less to suggest that any analysis
of trends, root causes, problem sites, or recurring issues were identified
from this data.
Basic standards and controls
to guard against abuse broke down. Several workers – some DOES and
others pulled from other organizations – recorded and handled all the
information needed to register, including addresses and social security
numbers. This information, in many cases written on loose pieces of paper,
was needed to process the youth. Again, the pressure to cycle through a
large numbers in a short timeframe overwhelmed many concerns that would
normally halt an operation. One worker described the work process from her
experience:
Groups of youth were brought in a room for registration and
job referrals. They were given cut-up pieces of paper to write their
name and the last four digits of their Social Security number. These
papers were given to us, to search the system for their record. In some
cases, they would write their entire Social Security numbers down. If we
found the person in the system, we would print out or write out their
referral and their orientation schedule. If the person claimed to have
registered but we could not locate him or her in the system, then the
individual was asked to come to one of our work stations, sit down, and
write or verbally state their full Social Security number, address, and
contract information. This information was entered into the IT system. I
ripped up and threw out my paperwork. I saw papers with similar
information scattered around other work desks. I have no idea if these
papers were collected or not.
By every measure, however,
the most damaging consequence of the chaos surrounding those first few
days was that in the rush to assign kids to worksites, no one captured
accurately all the work assignments that were made. In short, DOES did not
know who worked where all of its summer workers were. Without this
information, the city could not accurately capture time and attendance and
thus could not accurately pay its summer youth workers.
CHASING PAYDAY: THE FIRST PAY PERIOD
The end of the first week of
work also represented the end of the first pay period. It was clear to all
the senior staff involved that after the events of the first week,
processing complete and accurate time and attendance data would be
impossible. Work sites could only enter time for youth they were
officially assigned. With so many unrecorded assignments and so many
worksites unprepared to use the new time entry system, it was not possible
to have a high degree of confidence in the data that was entered.
This left the administration
with an unwelcome choice: either it could pay according to official time
and attendance records, which would have inevitably underpaid or not paid
thousands of youth who legitimately worked during that first week, or it
could pay everyone registered in the system as if they had worked the
maximum hours, which would have certainly paid some youth for more hours
than they actually worked, since it is unlikely that every youth went to
work every day. This latter option would assume perfect attendance,
account for different age-based weekly hour limits, and given the
circumstances was seen as the only option that would ensure that all those
who did work received a paycheck. The administration chose to pay all the
kids. In explaining the rationale behind this decision, one interviewee
summarized it this way: “We did not want to punish kids for mistakes
made by adults.”
Even this, according to
interviews, did not prevent complaints of underpayment on pay day, in part
because DOES had not yet distributed a large number of debit cards (there
were 11,966 cards activated, and an additional 9,283 cards issued but not
distributed1). DOES set up a pay-day
processing center at the Convention Center to handle claims of incorrect
payment. Working with the OCFO, the city had on-site about 9,300
undistributed debit cards, as well as a stack of checks with amounts
filled in but blank name lines, along with CFO staff certified to process
payments (164 checks were actually used). Youth who had not received a
debit card would leave with one in hand. Those who lost their debit card
would have their original one cleared of any balance, have another
reordered, and because this process took 72 hours, would leave with a
check in hand.
THE SECOND PAY PERIOD
If mistakes were corrected
at that point, then the budget would not have ballooned to the extent it
did, because historically attrition does not become a significant factor
until later in the summer. The second pay period, however, led to the same
result as the first. In contrast with the first pay period, however, the
initial intention was to pay according to data reflected in the time and
attendance system. But many registered participants and many records were
still missing from the payroll system.
DOES also did not set up a
processing center after the second pay period, believing the data to be
relatively clean. When pay day hit, kids showed up at DOES’s H Street
headquarters with claims of underpayment or non-payment, claims that DOES
considered likely to be true. There was, however, no way to verify each
and every claim since DOES still did not trust data in the time entry
system. Left with the same choice as before – to err on the side of
underpayment or overpayment – the administration chose once again to pay
all kids for the maximum allowable hours.
Why did data integrity
issues persist weeks after they occurred? Why did the payroll problems
continue? Based on discussions with managers and other staff, two reasons
emerged: 1) everyone involved, but most notably DOES, consistently
underestimated the extent and complexity of the problem, and 2) DOES did
not demonstrate the organizational competence to methodically plan and
execute an appropriate response to these challenges. As a result, too few
people, and in many cases people with the wrong skill sets, were deployed
to resolve the crisis. Help was requested and given, but not enough help,
and more importantly, not the right kind of help. Everyone’s energy was
on reacting to the crisis immediately in front of them, rather than
solving the core problems.
In conducting research,
several examples were presented that demonstrated this. One person
described how ideas were proposed about calling all worksites to verify
names in the time entry application, but were never followed through.
Another interviewee described how worksites were allowed to submit time
and attendance forms up until only a few hours before data needed to be
sent to financial institutions. This left too little time for identifying
and correcting problems. In yet another example of the workflow
challenges, an interviewee described the following scene at a payment
center:
There was one day after the second pay period
where we had 500 or 600 kids outside H Street claiming payroll issues.
Yet, we had only one person who can cut checks. We had only two people
loading value onto the debit card. There was no capacity to handle
everything. The response then became to immediately load the max amount
on the debit card, rather than call the worksite, just to move people
along. There was no crisis management or considerations of workflow
issues.
Allegations of poor work
execution also consistently emerged in interviews. Some allege that work
Youth Programs staff did not enter time entry forms that had been
submitted. Others allege that clear directions were not followed by
several staff members. Research was unable to verify whether and the
extent to which willful insubordination occurred, but it should be noted
that it was raised by several people. Others, who did not agree with
allegations of widespread noncompliance, describe a workforce that by the
second and third pay period was exhausted, and not up to fixing the crisis
without additional help or replacements.
THE THIRD PAY PERIOD: ASSESSING THE DAMAGE
Shortly before the end of
the third pay period, the City Administrator convened a meeting with
nearly all the key managers to create a plan to gauge the depth of
problems with payroll. Gathered around the table was staff from DOES, OCA,
EOM, OCTO, and the OCFO. Enough data was obtained from the first two pay
periods to indicate that the SYP still could not account for the
placements of all its workers.
The City Administrator laid out a plan that
would call on a manual field operation to obtain attendance information
from work sites that did not report any information via the time and
attendance system during pay period two. This approach would serve as a
gap analysis, to determine the difference between identifiable hours,
staffing, site quality found through field visits, compared with payroll
data collected electronically during the first two pay periods. The
project managers assigned to this task pulled staff resources from
throughout EOM, the OCA, and city agencies to deploy to the field. In all,
roughly 60 DC employees went to the field over a three-day period to
collect paper time records, and bring them back to a central processing
center. The processing center, which was now moved to the Wilson Building,
was staffed 16 hours per day to enter time as it returned from the field.
These efforts were not
designed to gain control of payroll, but rather help with that task later
on. An analysis of data showed enough entry errors and inconsistencies to
not gain the government’s trust. Once again the data complexity of
challenges around time and attendance proved too formidable. For the third
consecutive pay period, the city decided to pay all the kids the maximum
allowable hours.
THE FOURTH PAY PERIOD: GAINING
CONTROL
The fourth pay period ended
on August 1. This report has been written between the end of the fourth
pay period and the pay day for that pay period. It was during the fourth
pay period that the city finally began to gain control of attendance and
payroll information. Several other changes allowed for this. First,
management of the crisis became a team effort involving several parts of
government. DOES’s IT office
was brought under managerial control of OCTO, the city’s technology
office, and DOES’s IT Director was replaced. A new project manager was
assigned by OCTO to manage all aspects of the crisis, and a “war room”
was established at OCTO headquarters, and staffed by data mining and
project management experts. Additionally, EOM began to pull appropriate
staff from throughout District government to supplement, and in some cases
take over, core functions of DOES’s Youth Programs Office.
The strategy to gain control
has been one of incrementally verifying and correcting entire classes of
data error. More specifically, the team developed a comprehensive listing
of every way that payroll information could be incorrect, then validated
the likelihood of error based on testing against available data. This has
allowed them to identify what errors are likely to exist, the financial
impact of those errors, and then focus their attention on those that are
of the highest risk. As each type of error is accounted for and resolved,
the amount paid to youth can begin to reflect the real hours, pay rates,
and participants.
This process, as it
continues to progress, has been critical in verifying the existence and
extent of waste, fraud, and abuse.
SHORT TERM ACTIONS (1): REDUCE PAYROLL
Payroll for the fourth pay
period will, for the first time since the program began, pay less than the
maximum allowable hours. The approach taken to start fixing payroll for
the program’s remaining weeks is to: 1) identify and remove from the
system people who are not part of the program at this point, and 2) ensure
that payments reflect the program’s most fundamental parameters
involving pay rates, age limits, and allowable hours.
More specifically, the focus
is to:
1.
Tighten our level of confidence in payroll data by:
a.
Validating all major sources of error, the findings of which
were highlight in this report, and stop payments to individuals whom we
have a high degree of confidence are no longer in the program
b.
Implementing sanity checks on payrolls prior to look for
known issues that cause re-work at payday processing centers
c.
Eliminating the practice of maintaining information
off-line, and bring online all prior records
2.
Implement strong external communications with participants
and their parents by:
a.
Contacting all individuals impacted by changes to payment
strategy through multiple communications channels such as robo-calls, text
messages, use of an outbound call center, and others
b.
Establishing a call center that will allow for many payment
disagreements to be resolved without requiring that a participant travel
to a processing center
3.
Strengthen Pay Center readiness by:
a.
Opening pay centers in advance, which will result in problem
resolved in advance and shorter lines
This plan will scale back from the perfect attendance presumption in the
following ways:
SHORT TERM ACTIONS (2): IDENTIFY AND RESPOND TO WASTE, FRAUD, AND
ABUSE
The full extent of waste,
fraud, and abuse is not yet known, but significant progress has been made
in gauging the likelihood and extent of it in the program. In some cases,
allegations of fraud and abuse have not borne out. But in many cases, some
presence of fraud has been verified. Collectively, there is great concern
that hundreds – and perhaps thousands – of individuals registered in
the youth program have been knowingly engaged in fraud.
To be thorough, the report
examines each known allegation separately. They are as follows:
- Is there
participation by non-District residents?
- Finding:
Verified but minimal presence in program, low financial exposure.
Out of more than 21,000 participants, only 207 were found to with
recorded addresses outside of the District. Of these, it is unclear
how many are considered under the care of the District (i.e., in
foster homes). This does not exclude the possibility that a young
person would show fraudulent proof of residence. - Action:
Given that due diligence was conducted upon registration, no
immediate action will be taken to fully address this allegation
until more significant challenges are resolved. DOES will
incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for 2009. - Are
participants working but still not officially registered? - Finding:
No longer present in program, low financial exposure. This would be
a source of underpayment of youth. At this point, however, the team
believes that after three pay periods, all errors of this kind have
been resolved through in-person processing and data clean-ups to
date. - Action:
DOES will incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans
for 2009. - Are individuals
not registered, not working, yet getting paid? - Finding:
Not yet validated, but a potential area of high financial exposure.
When the prior time entry system migrated to the new system,
outdated names were not entirely cleansed from the system. In all
more than 8,000 names were transferred from one system to the next.
Most of these names are valid. If some date back to prior years and
remain in the system this year, they would in fact be getting paid.
At the time of this report, the OCTO team was identifying how many
names came from the old system, and do not have any other sign of
active participation, such as signing up for a one card, having time
entered this year, etc. - Action:
Once names have been identified, the city will terminate payment to
them and remove their debit cards from the system, and identify for
further action if there are any individuals in this group who
activated their debits cards. DOES will incorporate lessons from
this analysis into how it plans for 2009. - Are individuals
getting are paid, yet are listed as working at sites whose programs
have ended or sites have otherwise closed? - Finding:
Not present in the program at this point, potentially moderate
financial exposure. The earliest site closings are August 1, which
would impact the fifth pay period. - Action:
OCTO is currently validating site closures, and will be able to
remove youth assigned to these programs from the payroll system,
unless they appear to have joined a new program or worksite. DOES
will incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for
2009. - Are individuals
who began the program, but were terminated by their employer, still
being paid? - Finding:
Verified but minimal presence in the program, low financial
exposure. To date, 122 out of more than 21,000 youth have been
dismissed by their employer. However, to date they have been paid
along with other youth. - Action:
Immediately remove these individuals form payroll records. DOES will
incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for 2009. - Are individuals
working but have not been paid? - Finding:
Very low probability of existing in the program, moderate financial
exposure if it does. There are approximately 2,800 debit cards that
have not been picked up. Potentially, these could represent
unrealized earnings by program participants. - Action:
OCTO is currently examining if the city has any record of an
interaction that would suggest that the individuals associated with
these cards are or have been participating in the program. If they
are none, then this funding can be reclaimed by the city.
DOES will incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it
plans for 2009. - Are individuals
who have since dropped out of the program are still being paid? - Finding:
Validated as existing in the program, moderate financial exposure.
There are 1,881 individuals who have displayed perfect absenteeism
for an entire pay period, but are registered in the system and have
some type of interaction – perhaps they worked previous pay
periods – that demonstrate a legitimate reason for their presence
in the system. - Action:
These individuals will be removed from the payroll system. DOES will
incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for 2009. - Are individuals
older or younger than the allowable age range for the program working
and getting paid? - Finding:
Verified but minimal presence in the program, low financial
exposure. There have been 104 individuals who based on Social
Security records are either older than 21 or younger than 14. The
vast majority of these individuals are older, not younger. - Action:
Terminate immediately and remove from payroll.
Pay for work completed by those who are 13 years of age. DOES
will incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for
2009. - Are individuals
being been paid twice, once by their private employer and once by the
city? - Finding:
Highly likely to be present in the program, but with minimal
financial impact. The city has received complaints from parents with
children who were placed at private employers, and paid by those
employers, but also have had city-funded accounts (debit cards)
created in their names (essentially reporting unearned money). It is
highly likely, given the decision to pay all children the full
amount, that these youth received two payments, though many may not
have activated their debit cards. - Action:
The city will cross reference payroll names with those assigned to
unsubsidized private employers, and remove them from payroll. DOES
will incorporate lessons from this analysis into how it plans for
2009. - Are individuals
paid the wrong pay rate? - Finding:
Not yet verified but likely present in the program, moderate
financial exposure. During the prior pay periods, the payroll system
adjusted pay rates to account for work sites that paid a wage higher
than the federal minimum. However, several work sites pay all
participants at a rate higher than the federal minimum wage. In
researching the basis for this, the data team has not yet found any
documentation approving this, either in contracts or other
materials. This is an area of great concern, and if confirmed, is an
example of negligence. - Action:
Continuing to verify if pay rates are contained somewhere in
contracts or other legally sufficient documents. - Are individuals
getting paid for more hours than they worked? - Finding:
Widespread, high financial exposure. By definition, when the city
chose to pay every registrant the maximum hours allowed, many young
people who worked only a portion of their scheduled hours were
overpaid. - Action:
This is the most significant and challenging problem to solve,
because it involves thousands of individual entries at hundreds of
worksites, for reasons previously described in this report. It will
likely require continued field operations to work with every host
and site to ensure accurate attendance is being captured.
SHORT TERM ACTIONS (3): THE CONTINGENCY RESERVE
By the time of the third
payroll, the program had exhausted its revised budget.
Under the local Anti-Deficiency Act only two options existed:
either an external source of funding had to be identified and made
immediately available to cover cost overruns; or the program had to
terminate immediately after only five weeks, ending summer employment for
thousands of District youth who had registered, worked, and planned to
continue to do so for the remainder of the summer.
Cost estimates for a worst-case scenario (in which there is no
improvement in the program’s operational problems, most importantly the
ability to verify time and attendance and thus deduct attrition from
payroll expenses) projected that the program could exceed its revised
budget by $20.1 million. On
July 30, the Mayor formally requested an allocation up to this amount from
the Contingency Reserve Fund, while efforts to reduce the cost of the
program continued.
The Contingency Reserve is a
critically important component of the District’s General Fund, created to
meet unforeseen needs that arise during the fiscal year, including revenue
shortfalls, unexpected obligations caused by changes in Federal law,
natural disasters, and other unanticipated events with budget
implications. As of December
31, 2007, the date of the most recent official certification, the
Contingency Reserve fund balance was $223.5 million, including a
receivable of $53.1 million. Any
allocation from the Contingency Reserve must be repaid within two years.
As noted in the Mayor’s July
30 letter, it may be possible to repay the Contingency Reserve from the
existing, certified fund balances of Special Purpose (O-type) accounts
managed by DOES. Two of these
accounts (0611 and 0624) were created to provide for the administrative
costs of managing other employment-related programs.
Because revenue collections have greatly outpaced recent spending,
the balances of these administrative accounts nearly tripled from $7.7
million in FY 2004 to $21.4 million at the end of FY 2007.
In addition, the balance of an account (0612) created to hold UI
interest and penalties grew fivefold, from just under $208,000 in 2004 to
nearly $1.1 million in FY 2007. A
fourth account (0614/0600), with a balance of $1.4 million, has been
dormant (with no revenues or expenditures) since FY 2005.
While the balances in these accounts appear to be sufficient to
repay the Contingency Reserve allocation to DOES, doing so would require a
legislative change to the respective statutes that created the accounts.
Given the administrative missteps that have caused the cost overruns in
the summer youth program, it may be appropriate to repay the Contingency
Reserve from these DOES administrative accounts.
WHAT WORKED
Program successes are not
this report’s focus, but also should not be lost or forgotten. In fact,
they need to be recognized as a fundamental to next year’s planning. In
the course of researching problems, several innovations and improvements
show demonstrable progress. Among those are:
o
A significant increase in the number of hard-to-reach youth
were provided a summer job than in prior years. This factor contributed to
the managerial challenges, but in itself should not be dismissed as
without value.
o
DCPS more than doubled the number of summer school students
who graduated due to their summer studies, which they attribute largely to
not losing summer students to non-academic jobs
o
Juvenile arrests for violent crimes 2008 are down 34% (148
in 2007, 98 in 2008), while arrests of adults for violent crimes are up 4%
(599 in 2007, 620 in 2008). Juveniles arrested for stolen vehicles are
down 60% from 2007 (73 in 2007, 29 in 2008), while adult arrests for that
crime are down 20%.
o
Introduction of the debit card system that allows
participants to avoid bank fees and gain quicker access to their money.
o
Introduction of the One Card, a form of identification for
program participants that also contained a Metro SmarTrip chip, loaded
with $10, to make commuting to jobs easier.
o
Success of several large programs with defined objectives
and enrollment, such as the District Department of the Environment’s
Green Team. This program consistently retained a workforce of 250
individuals over all pay periods to date, who cleaned up neighborhoods
surrounding rec centers, while receiving job training in emerging “green
economy” industries, such as green roofs, tree maintenance, and water
quality monitoring.
o
A second effective program was run by the Department of
Youth Rehabilitative Services, which enrolled 260 youth. Youth enrolled in
gained knowledge and skills that they can reflect on their resume as well
as apply to future life experiences. Youth
participated in landscaping (on
grounds and within the community), where youth planted vegetables and
mowed lawns for elderly residents; arts
craft corps, where youth made murals and signs for the new facility;
media advocacy, where youth learned the art of photography; outdoor
leadership, where youth build boats and rope courses; and culinary,
where youth learned the art of cooking and food preparation.
Such activities not only gave youth an opportunity to give back to
the community, but enhanced their leadership, conflict resolution, and
communication skills.
LONG TERM ACTIONS: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 2009
There are a number of
changes that the department should make for 2009, some of which are listed
in the prior section on allegations. But, several critical strategic
lessons stand out:
1.
Invest in what works,
stop funding what does not. This sounds obvious, but is often
overlooked. It was clear during research that some programs provided a
higher quality experience to young people than others; some programs can
demonstrate results and others do not. Yet, the number of organizations
that receive funding year-after-year suggests that host organizations are
not asked to demonstrate that they prepare young people for jobs later in
life.
2.
Maintain a commitment
to providing quality experiences to a large number of District youth.
It was not the findings of this report that aggressive recruitment goals
alone caused problems; rather, the more critical root cause was the
organization was unable to implement these goals effectively. Fraud and
abuse, while important to highlight and eliminate, was not the norm.
Rather, the youth that do not bother to look for summer work until
June may in fact be the very young people who the city should target and
build its operation around.
3.
Reassess leadership,
skills and people required to manage and run the organization, and put the
right people in the right job. The operational complexity of
maintaining a 20,000-person summer program offering quality jobs likely
requires different skills and knowledge than running a 12,000-person
program with an April registration deadline. It demands a commitment to
and comfort-level with a sophisticated amount of data management, project
tracking, quantifiable program evaluations and technology. A complete
reorganization and a top-down assessment of whether individual skills
match requirements should occur within the Office of Youth Programs.
4.
Enforce time entry
requirements at host organizations. Despite clear language in
contracts that require time tracking, no incentives exist or are utilized
to enforce these requirements. Host organizations not compliant with time
entry should be subject to penalties, and consideration for future
de-funding.
5.
Have job assignment
available for youth as they register, with goal of registering a higher
percent of participants before the program begins, by securing contracts
earlier or migrating to multi-year contracts with providers. The
delays that plagued the 2008 program cannot continue in 2009. Given that
the District knows that it will need host organizations every year,
multi-year contracts provide a vehicle to eliminate (except for
6.
Relentlessly
challenge assumptions, and train people how to respond to unexpectedly
large workflows. Clearly, assumptions for around the timing and
progress of preparations need to be thoroughly verified by data. It is not
enough to just discuss unexpected events. Contingency plans should be
developed. Staff should be trained with processes to adapt to
less-than-ideal scenarios, most notably how to build processes and
workflows to manage large volumes of in-person requests.
7.
Eliminate all paper
processes. Reliance on paper-based processes, even when online
alternatives were available, is a pervasive theme of this report. The
entire workflow, from registration and placement to time entry, needs to
be managed online.
8.
Continually validate
information to stop fraud and abuse before or just after it occurs.
The actions taken by OCTO during the fourth pay period proved that it is
possible to identify waste, fraud, and abuse quickly to eliminate it from
the program. This requires a relentless commitment to searching for data
“errors” as they appear in the system.
9.
Integrate the debit
card with the one card. Each program, individually, was effective in
2008. It remains inefficient, however, to require young people to register
for cards and maintain two separate cards. Given the presence of one’s
photo on the ID, it could also the city’s ability to guard against
abuse.
APPENDIX A: TIMELINE OF FIRST
3 PAY PERIODS
1. The data team working on the project is still
clarifying this precise numbers.