The State Auditor’s Office has released an efficiency audit of the Public Utility Commission and the Office of Public Utility Counsel. Highlights from the audits include:
Public Utility Commission of Texas
- Case Management System Adoption. The Commission was scheduled to deploy a new case management system in October 2026. While the Commission has completed significant development work for the system adoption, it should establish a change management framework to retire duplicate tracking and confirm expected efficiencies.
- Invoice Processing. Incomplete purchasing and approval steps, manual invoice tracking, and limited staffing continuity contribute to the Commission making late payments and incurring interest costs. Reassessing the sequence of purchasing and payment activities; defining responsibilities and timeframes for actions outside Accounts Payable; and strengthening training, cross-training, invoice monitoring, and backup coverage would help the Commission more efficiently process vendor payments.
- Case Tracking. The Commission’s processes for tracking approximately 1,000 cases are decentralized, spanning multiple functions and systems with no management view of status, aging, or workload. While the new case management system is intended to address these issues, the Commission can increase efficiency by defining the intended end state, including the system of record; the role of the Agency Information System; and centralized reporting of case status, aging, workload, and reasons for delay. These actions would give management a view of the full caseload and allow the agency to reallocate resources now spent maintaining parallel tools.
Office of Public Utility Counsel
- Market Data Analytics. The Office has the authority to request and receive critical electricity market data. The Office has established measures of analytics activity and utilization that take effect in fiscal year 2028. Adding outcome measures would allow the Office to show how its analytical work supports its statutory responsibilities and to track the consulting costs saved by performing analyses internally.
- Case Tracking and Performance Reporting. The Office’s case tracking and performance reporting relies on manual compilation, resulting in rework and correction of reported results. Streamlining these processes through a common source of case and project information, standardized classification, and documented changes between reported versions could help reduce duplicate data entry, reporting rework, and risk of errors.
For more information, see the full audit here (PDF). Links and info for previously released SAO audits can be found here.
