The State Auditor’s Office has released an efficiency audit of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). The audit identified three main areas with inefficiencies:
Management Processes
- The Board’s key organizational decisions and changes are not always communicated with the context needed for leaders and staff to act efficiently.
- The Board’s major programs and initiatives are not consistently linked to intended outcomes and agency-wide strategic priorities, limiting the Board’s ability to determine whether resources are focused on efforts producing intended results.
Technology Modernization
- The Board’s technology decisions are not consistently evaluated from an agency-wide perspective, limiting opportunities to optimize technology investments.
- The Board’s larger technology needs are not managed through a consistent, documented process, limiting the Board’s ability to measure performance and efficiently plan technology-dependent work.
Business Process Optimization
- The Board’s community college funding processes rely on manual workflows across multiple systems, increasing administrative effort and reducing time for higher-value analysis.
- The Board’s manual loan administration processes and legacy systems increase administrative effort and reduce operational efficiency.
- Academic program approvals for public higher education institutions rely on multiple systems and manual steps, increasing administrative effort and reducing efficiency.
- Incomplete hiring milestone information limits the Board’s ability to identify delays, target process improvements, and improve hiring efficiency.
The full audit report can be found here.
