30. Texas does not have sufficient oversight mechanisms to prevent or minimize the sorts of project failures experienced with integrated eligibility and enrollment.
The integrated eligibility project and resulting $899 million contract escaped any oversight designed to monitor the quality and effectiveness of state expenditures.
Texas has a Quality Assurance Team (QAT) comprising the heads of the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), State Auditor's Office (SAO) and Department of Information Resources (DIR). This team's responsibilities include "establishing rules and guidelines to govern the quality assurance process and review of major information resources projects" and "provid[ing] oversight and assistance necessary to support successful completion of major information resource projects." [1]
The QAT is not, however, intended to be a contract monitor. Rather, QAT has the authority to review agency information technology projects and recommend best practices for future projects. QAT reviewed 31 projects in 2005, yet its report for that year makes no mention of the integrated eligibility project and Accenture's $899 million contract. QAT reviewed only the TIERS technology, and identified it as "high risk" for the second year in a row.
In fact, TIERS technology development costs alone are expected to cost the state $298.7 million, according to the most recent QAT review, and that sum is in addition to the $899 million contract with Accenture. [2] Of the 19 "high risk" projects being monitored by QAT in 2005, TIERS represented 46.6 percent of the associated expenditures.
QAT can recommend major information resources projects to DIR for oversight. As part of this oversight, DIR must provide risk management, quality assurance services, independent project monitoring and project management. [3] The review team could find no evidence that DIR provided any of these services for either integrated eligibility or TIERS.
For two consecutive years, 2004 and 2005, QAT identified the same two issues common to all agencies:
- "Many agencies and universities do not routinely practice quality assurance (QA) as a component of their management of technology projects." [4] QAT defines evidence of appropriate quality assurance as projects that are "successfully completed on time and within budget." [5]
- "Several projects are considered high-risk due to the lack of an effective contract that clearly delineates expected vendor performance." [6] QAT reported in both 2004 and 2005 that DIR was developing enhanced contract management guidelines and a specific technology contracting addendum for the contract management guide. These guidelines might have helped HHSC with the Accenture contract.
Both of these findings continue to apply to the integrated eligibility project today.
Without meaningful state oversight, IE project failures were allowed to escalate until service to clients was disrupted significantly enough to catch the attention of the Legislature and media.
Endnotes
[1] Quality Assurance Team: Legislative Budget Board, State Auditor's Office, Department of Information Resources, 2005 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report (Austin, Texas, December 21, 2005), cover letter and p. 8.
[2] Quality Assurance Team, 2005 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report, p. 12.
[3] Tex. Gov. Code Ann. Ch. 2054.1181.
[4] Quality Assurance Team, 2005 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report, pp. 3-4; and Quality Assurance Team: Legislative Budget Board, State Auditor's Office, Department of Information Resources, 2004 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report (Austin, Texas, December 1, 2004), p. 5.
[5] State Auditor's Office, A Review of State Entities' Quality Assurance Procedures (Austin, Texas, February 2002), cover letter.
[6] Quality Assurance Team, 2005 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report, p. 4; and Quality Assurance Team, 2004 Quality Assurance Team (QAT) Annual Report, pp. 5-6.