Condition: During testing of eligibility, the following items were noted:
• Two beneficiaries had income entered incorrectly, causing the benefits to be overstated.
• One beneficiary had income entered incorrectly but there was no impact on the benefit.
• One beneficiary’s income was not entered for...
Condition: During testing of eligibility, the following items were noted:
• Two beneficiaries had income entered incorrectly, causing the benefits to be overstated.
• One beneficiary had income entered incorrectly but there was no impact on the benefit.
• One beneficiary’s income was not entered for consideration, which caused the beneficiary to be incorrectly labeled as eligible.
Recommendation: We recommend that KDCF strengthen internal controls in place to mitigate this from happening in the future.
Views of responsible officials: There is no disagreement with the audit finding.
Action taken in response to finding: Below are the determined causes for the identified errors.
• Failure to review application and supporting documents prior to processing – Case #1
• Failure to double check information that was entered – Case #2
• Failure to review EDBC summary – Case #3
• Failure to adequately document income on the Application Worksheet – where they got income, listing income dates and amounts – Case #4
All causes identified are obviously human error related to lack of attention to detail. In each of the four cases identified, staff reviewed the eligibility determination and corrected as appropriate, including Recovery Accounts established and notices mailed to the household.
Corrective action will involve review of training material to determine if there are opportunities to strengthen training material to enhance emphasis on attention to detail for staff receiving the training. Emphasize will also be placed on reviewing material before finalization of case processing to assure accuracy of determination.
In addition, the agency is reviewing plans to move from a model that uses several temporary staff that complete only LIEAP eligibility to using full time EES eligibility staff that will do LIEAP in addition to all other EES caseloads. These workers do eligibility for several programs year-round and would not have to be retrained each year. We believe this will improve eligibility determinations and the review and approval process.
Name(s) of the contact person(s) responsible for corrective action:
Lewis Kimsey, Public Service Executive
Shannon Connell, Policy Coordination Assistant Director.
Planned completion date for corrective action plan: Training Material finalized by 10/1/24 and that training will be completed by Dec 31, 2024.