By The Office Of Inspector General
The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General has completed a second follow-up to its May 2016 audit of the Administrative Hearings’ adjudication timeliness which concludes that DOAH has not fully implemented corrective actions related to the audit findings.
The original audit assessed whether DOAH used nationally recognized performance measures of clearance rate and time to disposition to assess the flow and timeliness of cases under its purview. OIG found that DOAH did not measure or set standards for clearance rates or time to disposition, and that the Department’s lack of monitoring impeded its ability to identify potentially problematic backlogs and cases of unusually long duration.
OIG previously recommended that DOAH use national standards to evaluate its performance on an ongoing basis, and work with ticketing departments to identify and address underlying causes for changing trends. DOAH committed to adopting clearance-rate and time-to-disposition standards, monitoring its performance through quarterly reports, and taking appropriate action to reduce backlogs.
In August 2017, OIG inquired and concluded that DOAH had begun to implement corrective actions. In October 2018, more than two years after the original audit, OIG inquired for a second time about the status of corrective actions. While DOAH has created clearance-rate and time-to-disposition monitoring reports, the reports are not finalized, and time-to-disposition reports are still a “work in progress.” OIG urges DOAH to complete the design and implementation of monitoring reports to improve the Department’s ability to identify and address negative operational trends.
The full report can be found online at OIG’s website.
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Posted on January 14, 2019