| James F. Slatic, Chairman |
| Ana Maria Faith |
| Herbert Harder, M.D. |
| Peggy Pruneau |
The 1998-1999 Grand Jury has been interested in the ultimate disposition of the recommendations which would result from its formal audits and individual committee studies undertaken during its 12-month tenure. In keeping with this interest, a research and follow-up committee was formed and it was charged with the responsibility of reviewing Grand Jury recommendations, and the appropriate responses thereto, from the Board of Supervisors and various County agencies for the past five years. The purpose of this follow-up activity was to examine previous study areas in order to eliminate duplication of effort, benchmark the effectiveness of prior recommendations, and, as a result, to more clearly delineate meaningful areas of inquiry for our current Grand Jury. The committee's main thrust was to identify those recommendations which would provide the most dramatic positive impact to the agencies reviewed, but which had not been fully implemented.
As a result of this review, the research and follow-up committee found that, for the most part, the Board of Supervisors and the Chief Administrative Officer were among the most timely and responsive in addressing the recommendations of the prior Grand Juries. Some other departments of County government were frequently slower to respond in a prompt manner and the central reasons frequently cited for the inaction were as follows:
1. Budgetary constraints
2. Recommended actions were in the planning stages.
3. Changes were already in motion.
4. Inadequate or unclear jurisdictional authority.
5. Disagreement with Grand Jury findings and recommendations.
However, as a result of the continued review of past recommendations and their current status, the committee became aware that in a large majority of cases, i.e., estimated at 90%, recommendations proposed by previous Grand Juries had, in fact, been eventually taken up and implemented by the agencies involved. The timing of this implementation was found to cover a period of as short as one year, and as long as three or four years beforefinally being fully accomplished. This discovery came about only after a painfully slow, tedious and largely manual research effort on the part of the members of the research and follow-up committee. It was based on a physical review process of five years of reading through prior Grand Jury reports for key recommendations and laboriously cross-checking for responses in central files and personal and telephone contact work with appropriate agency staff at the County and City level.
All of this extraordinary effort has highlighted the requirement for a computerized Grand Jury "Response Reporting Management System." This system would provide the capability to quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively research all past Grand Jury report recommendations and match them to appropriate agency responses, tracking them for time frame compliance, general effectiveness, and ultimate disposition. The anticipated benefits of such a computerized management system would be the following:
1. Allow the Grand Jury to make more effective use of the available time allotted to investigative activities by preventing overlapping studies of previously chosen subjects and agencies.
2. Permit the newly-seated Grand Jury to expeditiously screen all prior studies, thereby saving weeks, or even months, in determining worthwhile study topics.
3. Implement a system which would effectively track responses and resultant actions of various agencies to Grand Jury report recommendations and assist succeeding Grand Juries in monitoring compliance, as required.
It is recommended that:
All future Grand Juries, when initially sworn in, appoint a research and follow-up committee to monitor the content and status of previous Grand Jury recommendations for at least one year, as well as supervising the maintenance of the computerized tracking system.