Early Learning Coalition of the Nature Coast, Inc.

2019-1 Statewide Reporting System Failure On July 1, 2018, the Office of Early Learning (OEL) transitioned from the Enhanced Field System (EFS) Legacy to the EFS Modernization statewide reporting system, as Legacy was no longer supported. OEL required all coalitions to utilize this system for approval of eligibility, recording of attendance by providers, and calculation of payments to providers. The EFS Modernization was not properly tested in advance, and not calculating provider payments accurately during the year. Therefore, the Coalition operated without a functional statewide reporting system for the entire year. Based on guidance from OEL, the Coalition utilized estimates to make payments to providers in place of actual attendance records while the statewide system was not fully functional, resulting in differences each month. To mitigate the risk of inaccurate reporting from EFS Modernization, the Coalition began the lengthy and labor intensive process of manual reconciliation of all provider attendance records to actual payments made to providers. The aggregate differences from the reconciliation resulted in the necessity of a large adjustment to correct the basic financial statements and supplementary schedule of expenditures of federal awards and state projects. We recommend the Coalition continue to mitigate reliance on the statewide system and errors when the statewide system is down. We recommend increasing operational controls over provider payments in lieu of a fully functional statewide system. This would include increasing the frequency of monitoring providers during the year, requiring sign in/sign out sheets to be scanned and provided by each provider in order for the Coalition to monitor/reconcile to the provider?s attendance submitted to EFS Modernization.