By Don Michak Journal Inquirer August 28, 2014
The University of Connecticut effectively wasted $902,395
by paying annual license fees for financial system software that the school was
not ready to use, according to the state auditors.
Moreover,
the auditors say UConn’s Board of Trustees apparently
never approved the fixed-price contract that the school’s financial managers
executed with the consulting firm hired to help implement the new financial
system, which by June of last year had cost $10.1 million to develop.
In their
latest review of the state’s flagship university, the auditors reported that UConn began paying the purchasing software manufacturer, SciQuest Inc., in 2009.
Over a
three-year period, they added, UConn paid the North
Carolina-based firm annual license fees of $331,500, $305,660, and $265,235,
although the school didn’t actually utilize the SciQuest
product until 2012.
“This
software should not have been licensed before the university was ready to make
use of it,” they wrote.
The auditors
said an internal university audit had found that a detailed contingency plan
specifying the actions to be be taken in the event
the new financial system’s implementation failed hadn’t been prepared.
“It appears
that the university intended to revert to the previous financial system if
necessary, but had not established decision points that would trigger this
action nor documented how it would be carried out,” they wrote.
The auditors
recommended that UConn develop a “structured
methodology” for major software implementation projects, and that all projects
be approved by school trustees before they are initiated.
The auditors
said UConn didn’t adequately document the selection
of its new financial system, which was intended to improve workflow, eliminate
paper-based processing, and provide better internal control.
The system
deployed in 2012 is based on Kuali Financial System
software designed and developed with foundation grants by a cooperative of
other universities and colleges.
The auditors
said they couldn’t find “any indication of a feature-by-feature comparison”
with competing products.
“More
advantageous alternatives may have been overlooked,” they wrote.
They also
said the initial selection process “appears to have been driven solely by the UConn core of financial management and staff,” and that
they found no evidence “of significant input from the wider university
community.”
They
recommended that UConn conduct a “formal,
well-documented selection process for all major acquisitions” and that “every
functional area that will be significantly affected” have adequate representation
in the process.
UConn officials told the auditors that they agreed with those
recommendations. Major information technology projects will require approval by
the board of trustees, they said.
Elsewhere in
the 41-page review, the auditors reported that while maximum salaries are set
for UConn employees that fall under one of the
standard state collective-bargaining agreements, the school has not established
such maximum rates for employees represented by the University of Connecticut
Professional Employees Union and the American
Association of University Professors.
They said
that as a result the compensation levels of UConn
professional employees “can increase indefinitely” and that the school’s board
of trustees “has not opted to establish maximum salary levels, as is standard
practice for state employees.”
The auditors
recommended that maximum levels be set for all professional employees, “through
the collective-bargaining process, if necessary.”
UConn officials responded that the school’s “compensation
structure” is established through the collective-bargaining process and that
any changes would have to be addressed through negotiations that aren’t slated
to begin until 2015.
In another
recommendation, the auditors said UConn should
establish procedures for verifying the representations of job candidates
regarding their work experience and credentials.