this was important because -- i'm not referring to anyone here on this committee. i thought this was important because either we talk about this now and start this conversation now, or if it turns out in a month or two that the $2 million level as was proposed we'retion ~ we're going to have a long hearing at that point. [speaker not understood]. one thing i'd like to request of the various city departments that are here, hopefully by the s.f.puc working with the department of environment, working with lafco, working with others, is if you could propose to us how we could get up to the full funding level of that i think everyone here wants. i hope that is something that can be done with the sfpuc budget, but obviously happy to consider other opportunities that might be out there. i also would like to ask from the sfpuc you heard a number of suggestions around this program and if we can get some resolution and clarity over that, i think that would be very helpful. i also just want to note that

this is an issue that has brought together really a wide coalition of folks from environmentalists to industry, to workers from many different communities, from the bayview to asian neighborhood design and others, from my perspective, i think when a program like this for the low dollar amount that we're talking about has had that kind of impact, we really need to -- we really need to take that seriously. and then the last thing i want to ask for is i think part of why it's difficult to talk about a full funding level is -- has to do with the financial situation facing power enterprise. and i know that we have heard today a number of people who have asked for audit of power enterprise. i want to ask, ms. hale, is there an audit that is being conducted on this? and just so we can understand because the information of the challenges that your department has faced have been so sudden, i think many of us want to understand how did we get here over the last five or six years

and wondering what kind of analysis is going to help us understand that. >> yes. so, the different puc's funds are audited every year. and we publish audited financial statements. we have obligations on that. we have reached out, as we are looking forward. we have reached out through the controller's office and to the budget analyst's office and been briefing them on our, on our increased capital needs and, and the basis behind that. and, so, apart of this standard budget process, we are engaged with them and are working with them in answering all questions. but, yes, the fund is audited every year. >> okay. and is the controller and our budget analyst are they going to engage in their own independent analysis of what has happened here? >> yes, we've asked both of them to be aware -- this isn't the first hearing we've had where that request has been made. and, so, we have been working with them, yes. >> okay. i'll just add my voice to i

think what the public understands and what my guess is, colleague, on the budget committee. i would like to see a real independent analysis of what's happened and an audit of the power enterprise just so we have a sense of this picture. obviously we're going to have to grapple with this in the coming years. i serve on our city's capital planning committee. it's something we're really going to have to talk about whether the priorities we're talking about ought to supersede others that have been in line for a number of year, but i think that will be well informed with an independent analysis. >> very good, thank you. >> thank you. and i just want to start by thanking everyone who came out here today to testify. this is definitely an important program and it's one that has hired individuals who do have barriers to employment opportunities. both puc and the department of public works has been really great at developing these innovative programs to help get

individuals employed. once employed, unfortunately, the program sometimes ends and then the individual who started with the job is basically back to square one and trying to figure out, well, what is the next step. and i do think it's important that we not only continue the program, but we make sure that we provide the resources necessary to help those individuals get to the next level of not only obtaining a job opportunity, but keeping one in the industry. and, so, seeing some of the partners here today, having the discussion around this program, some of the individuals who have hired and who have been hired is definitely great to see, but more importantly moving forward in the future, we have to make sure that the support, the case management services at asian neighborhood design has provided and the kinds of things that's necessary in order to help an individual get employed and stay employed, that's going to be an important key to this,

this program as well moving forward in the future. so, when we're talking about additional dollars, that's what i'm going to be looking for. because when we talk about individuals who have barriers to employment opportunities, in some cases and i know some of the individuals who benefited from these jobs in their 20s, this is their first job. and sometimes there's challenges with showing up on time. there's challenges with having an identification card. i mean, some of the basic things that many of us take for granted are still challenging. and, so, when i look at supporting a program, i want to see that the program is an overall comprehensive program that's going to not only effectively get someone a job, but is going to work at helping them to keep that job or be prepared for the next opportunity. de lancy street is a perfect example of what it is to work with an individual, teach them marketable skill, continue to work with them and to support them in their endeavors to seek

employment opportunities ~ not only within de lancy street, but also outside of de lancy street. we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we have to make sure that all the pieces of the puzzle are brought to the table when we talk about doing some great programs like this because i don't want them to start and stop, but more importantly, i don't want them to start and not provide the tools necessary to make it a real success. so, again, thank you. thank you, supervisor chiu, for bringing this hearing forward. and if there is no -- oh, supervisor tang. i sigh you on the roster. >> just some quick comments. thank you, supervisor breed. thank you, puc for having such a strong work force performance with this program ~. just as a reminder, sunset district, foggy sunset district is home to the [speaker not understood] in the entire country thanks to the puc. with that i look forward to the follow-up discussions. supervisor chiu, i don't know if you want to continue this hearing to the call of the

chair or -- >> i'm happy to continue this to the call of the chair in case we need another hearing. it is my hope in the next few weeks we can do this work and come to a resolution. if we're able to get to that, i don't think we need to have another hearing. but if we're not, we may need to. so, if we could continue this to the call of the chair for now. >> okay. so without objection, this item is continued to the call of the chair. thank you all again so much. [gavel] >> thank you all. >> madam clerk, can you call the next item, please? >> item number 3 is a hearing to receive updates, from various city departments required to provide a response on the implementation of recommendation no. 3 contained in the 2012-2013 civil grand jury report, entitled "use of nonprofit community-based organizations: measuring outcomes" and respond to the civil grand jury on the status of these implementations. ~ measuring outcomes." >> okay. we have ms. madolovich. am i saying your last name right? from the department of public health. >> good morning, yes. it's winona [speaker not understood]. i'm here and i am the director of applications for information systems. [speaker not understood]. the recommendation initially was that we needed additional

resources to bring in the net smart avatar system to allow the department to do work performed suggested. >> okay. >> [speaker not understood] i wasn't here, but the response i'm reading what we were going to hire staff when we had actually done at that time. i want to give you an update where we are today. it was a written response, i believe you have that in front of you. but the staff that was hired has made significant improvements to support the next smart avatar system for the implementation of online training videos, developing system functionality to allow provider to track due dates for clinical documents, and improve the [speaker not understood] of reports to assist the program. so, what has happened with the 2800 users in the system throughout the city is we have increased the ability to have the training online as well as continue to have training classes for them. hire the staff to provide the

staff [speaker not understood] and reports to monitor and meet their quality and departmental needs. we continue to hire in dph to fill integration needs between our system. so, the one resource that didn't show hired we are in the process of hiring still, but because it ha reorganized, we were able to give that type of support in a better way. we have a number of integration specialists now that can support the cphs system. dph is developing [speaker not understood] department so we have a chief medical officer representing the different clinical areas in dph and we are building up the clinical and schematic team to support that which really involve training and making sure we're meeting all of our clinical objectives. this will also, a we've reorganized, give us more standardization and allow the teams to search with the

activity in the application system which includes the avatar system. do you have any questions? >> no, we don't have any questions at this time. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. okay. i'd like to call up civil grand jury member daniel cress. >> thank you, madam chair, for this opportunity to address the committee on our report. dealing with the use of nonprofit community-based organization s and [speaker not understood] outcomes ~. i'd like to say at the start the cooperation from the people of the department of public health is absolutely outstanding. we had -- we're very impressed with the people that we met and the cooperation that we received. however, it was only during the course of our investigation that we received certain anonymous letters and memos, internal memos which alerted us to a problem, problems that

were inherent in the avatar system. a we came to under it, this is an extremely critical system within the department of public health. it serve as a principal billing system for paying cbo vendors and their services. and this is a particularly important because if the procedure aren't done properly, vendors can't -- may not be reimbursed. they depend upon those revenues to provide the services that they do. and i was very pleased to hear the representative from the department of public health talk about the training that was going on because one of the major complaints that was made by the vendors themselves was the connectivity issues, training was spotty and [speaker not understood]. clearly there was room for improvement there and it sounds

like much has been done. the system also documents required federal and state procedures necessary for obtaining reimbursement. so, it's very critical. it ensures that patients receiving mental health services are also receiving basic wellness services which are now required -- this is a requirement under the new affordable care act. and furthermore, provides the department with the comprehensive database for monitoring and measuring the efficacy of the many programs and services they provide to the under served segments of our community needing health services. and this was actually the focus of our, of our investigation. we were not concerned about contractual issues. we found contracts to be generally well structured, well monitored. we found the many [speaker not understood] well accounted for and so forth.

but we were concerned with was this information being used to evaluate programs and decide whether the money was being spent the most effectively. you know, the use of cbos to provide community-based organizations to provide our citizens ~ with the certain services is something that san francisco is a leader at. and we found it's a very innovative and cost-effective way to provide often very technical and specialized services. however, we would disagree with one of the conclusions of i think the board and others that there is a robust process for measuring actual outcomes of the hundreds of programs that provide it. so, [speaker not understood] has been working on it several times in the past before our civil grand jury investigation, but other civil grand juries

and also two independent task forces that were set up to look at this issue. and we concur that, that a robust process for measuring the actual outcomes of the programs be established. in conclusion, i just want to state my own personal impression, my interactionseses with the person at dph and with the two community-based organizations that we talked with was nothing short of inspirational. they were all very qualified, clearly dedicate today their work, addressing very difficult issues ~ regarding those with severe mental health problems. they deserve our gratitude and support in ensuring that the avatar system [speaker not understood] is the least we can do for them. thank you. >> before you go, i had a

question about measuring outcomes. >> yes. >> you interviewed cbos as a part of this process. >> right. >> and examining the organization, did you find that there what a need ~ to do that as a result of your observations or more so as a result of what you saw from a technical perspective? >> i think the issue of measuring outcomes is not something that is being resisted. people, both the department of public health and the cbos themselves want to be able to demonstrate that what they're doing actually is having a potive impact on people's lives. but we chose some issues that are very, very tough to be able to me you're those, whether you're making any progress. and there are debates in terms of which programs, which is the best way to handle certain things. i just -- what we were looking at is do we have the data, do

we have the information that we need to resolve those debates, to decide that we should be putting money into this kind of a program instead of this. as we've heard today, most of the money is scarce and we have to make tough choices. and when you have established long established programs in particular, there is less of an incentive to kind of look at them more critically. so, what is, what is -- what are the results? what's the data tell us? and that's hard to come by. and that's one of the reasons why we felt the avatar system was so important because it does start to provide that kind of baseline that you need over time to evaluate these programs and decide whether you should look at something different, different way to approach a problem. whether this one is actually [speaker not understood] getting traction or should be continued or increased. so, that's basically the issue, we felt there was so much money

going into a broad range of programs, that there was little ability to be able to evaluate the regulartive effectiveness of them. >> and, so, from what i'm reviewing here, dph's response is that they're working on it, they're adding additional staff support, and plan to move forward in that direction and i wanted to know what your response is to that. >> i think it's -- what i just heard is very encouraging. we're well aware of many of the deficiencies. it wasn't something that kind of came outright away. that said we had to receive this information anonymously. which i think points to a value as a civil grand jury that employees and even people in the cbos can raise issues that may be difficult for them to do personally. and, so, the civil grand jury is a good venue for being able

to vet those kinds of issues. but i do think that what it sounded like that they're making a lot of progress, solving a lot of the problems related to billing, and keeping track of people's records. another issue that came up, they talk about multiple -- frequent users of multiple services and not just with department of public health, but also human services, mayor's office of housing and so forth. do we know the people that we're trying to serve? it's a significant part of our community. it's a large part of our community, but it's not huge. and are we tracking how we're trying to help these people across the array of program that we have to offer? and that's something that's very hard to do. i think the avatar system can be helpful in that regard as well. >> for other departments as well? >> yes. >> it's interesting that you say that. i wanted to know if you had any

suggestions. and the reason why i'm asking is because i do understand that there are some programs that, you know, you can use data because there is a level of consistency whereas there are other program, it's really challenging to determine whether or not you're even making progress, but there is a need. and then there are other programs that we know that most people know are not effective. >> right. >> and it's not easily a one size fits all with regard to a technical system being put into place. for reporting and capturing data, yes, but for measuring, you know, whether or not the outcomes are what it is that we want or want to see, it's a lot more challenging and could be mostly on a, i guess organization by organization basis depending on who you, you know, i guess ask.

i just wanted to know if you believe that there is -- do you have a suggestion of a particular system or a way in which you think that we could put this together in a way that it could be effectively, you know, serving the population and not making it so cumbersome that it discourages the nonprofits from wanting to participate, but more importantly, it take them away from what they're there to do in the first place? there's a balance that we need to strike here. so, i'm just wanting to know if you had any potential suggestions for how we can begin the process of putting it together with the avatar system in particular. >> you're absolutely right. and it's interesting how this is -- we're certainly not the first to address this issue, and i think it will be with us for a long time.

in our report, we quote from a 2009 financial -- san francisco community based task force that made very specific recommendation with the mayor and collaboration with the board to [speaker not understood] collaborative process [speaker not understood] essential community based services to san francisco's most run virginiactionv population and goes on from there. ~ vulnerable population and goes on from there. i would go back to that recommendation. [speaker not understood]. that was a very cogent -- it was a good study, it was very helpful to us. and, so, these thing have been done before. i just think, you know, whether it's somewhere in the long-term planning department -- to be part of the civil grand jury was a tremendous experience, very educational. i learned so much about this

city and many plus percent of it very positive. so, it was an extremely valuable experience, a lot of very good things going on. i noticed on the agenda there is someone coming up to talk about systems issue that was done by a previous grand jury. [speaker not understood] a number of places, department of building inspection, real estate, certainly this one where system just seem to not be quite good enough. and it's kind of surprising, here we are in the heart of silicon valley, tech city, and we seem to have still some -- a way to go in order to improve the kind of system that deliver the information we need to make good decisions. so, we just thought that that task force in 2009 really nailed it and we should go back and look at that in a way,

trying to do that [speaker not understood] way a possible. it is such a big, big problem to get your hands around, but we agree that, you know, using thea kinds of organizations, doing it this way is the very way to do it. you can hire the experts you need for the problems you identify. but then what do you do once you've done that? and how do you evaluate those in a realistic way going forward? that's not working, we should look at doing it in a different way. >> thank you, i appreciate it. [multiple voices] >> thank you so much for your presentation and your work on the civil grand jury. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> john anderson, is he here to make comments? no? okay. so, i am going to open this item up to public comment.

and right now i have -- i think this is not -- this is for item 4. so, i want to open this up for public comment. are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. [gavel] >> colleagues, do we have any questions or comments about this particular item? i'll just wrap it up by saying that i do think it's important that from a city-wide perspective we look at our various departments that provide services through our cbos, whether it's to help individuals with mental health issues or to help family who are struggling or in bad situations, to help our young people. i mean, there are numerous cbos all over san francisco that

provide incredible services, but there are also challenges that some cbos -- and it is really difficult to measure what success is in some instances and i do think that by making sure that our systems are, you know, up to par technology wise, but more importantly that our systems are able to actively engage with one another. we need to figure out a better way to make it more efficient. right now we're member of the cbo community are expressing a desire ~ to receive additional support to do work in public housing development. but no one can tell me exactly whether or not any of the residents of public housing are actually using other services. it takes work for an individual to go into a household and figure out, are you getting help from, you know, these various departments, whether it's social services, child

care, state support. i mean, all of this stuff should be centralized. we shouldn't have to add additional dollars to serve an already vulnerable population, because what the organizations that are fund today do this are saying, they're actually serving that population, but we can't -- we don't have the system ~ the numbers of information because the different departments are not necessarily connected in that way. and i do think we need to take some steps towards correcting that. we are in a situation in san francisco where we have amazing technological organizations all over the place and we should start to put those things to use. and it would i think not only save us a lot of time. it would save us a lot of money that could actually be used better in serving this population. so, thank you all again for being here and, colleagues, do i have any further comments or suggestions moving forward?

no? no? okay. so, the recommendation has been implemented as reported by the office of the mayor and the department of public health. colleagues, would we like to make that recommendation or are there any other suggestions? >> no, so moved. >> okay. without objection, without objection. [gavel] >> it's recommended. thank you. ~ for being here today. can you call, please, the next item, please, madam clerk? >> yes. item number 4 is a hearing to receive updates, from various city departments required to provide a response, on the implementation of recommendation no. 13 contained in the 2012-2013 civil grand jury report, entitled "deja vu all over again: san francisco's city technology needs a culture shock" and respond to the civil grand jury on the status of these implementations. ~ culture shock." >> okay. do we have anyone -- thank you. i don't see your name. [laughter] >> good afternoon, supervisor

tang, supervisor breed, president chiu. pleasure to be here. >> oh, there we go, found it. sorry. can you address yourself? >> i can give you the update on the culture shock on another session, but the asset management -- first of all i want to acknowledge the hard work done by the people -- >> i'm sorry, can you introduce yourself, please? >> excuse me. my name is mark [speaker not understood], i'm the city cio. and the director of department of technology. and i would like to give you an update on the recommendation regarding asset management part of the grand jury report, the deja vu all over again. the bad news is that it's a broad scope problem to resolve

as ha been identified in the report. the good news is that we have aggressively started to remediate the issue structurally [speaker not understood]. the department of technology has implemented a platform called service now which addresses the license management, asset management so the pilot is currently within det. and we've also identified the additional structural [speaker not understood] required to make it a [speaker not understood] wide solution. part of that kirk kerkorian cf-wide solution is part of the recommendation for fy 15-16 budget like addressing the network ~ which requires the unified work necessary to be able to do the digital asset management across the board. ccf-wide but without waiting for this in the last few months ~ we've

implemented the platform configured it, tested it, and we are ready by this summer to present the plan that highlights the way to step-by-step implement it across the board for san francisco. so, i think we're doing reasonably well. there is much more to address. it's part of the unification of the city working together every day more on everything else. [speaker not understood] center, part of the somewhat related, in fact, directly related the [speaker not understood], with myself, sent a memo to all the directors of san francisco asking to communicate [speaker not understood] center and software and qualifications. and i was part of the overall plans to address this in a structural way together.