This audit evaluated whether 3 agencies and the Board of Education had implemented 7 previous audit recommendations. The Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) fully implemented 1 of 3 recommendations from our 2019 audit evaluating at-risk student counts, weights and expenditures. KSDE partially implemented the other recommendation, and the Board of Education did not implement the third recommendation. The Kansas Department of Agriculture partially implemented all 3 recommendations from our 2020 audit evaluating the agency's price verification inspection process. We could not evaluate whether the Kansas Department of Commerce implemented a recommendation from our 2020 Angel Investor Tax Credit Program audit.

We couldn’t determine how effective or timely the state’s child support services system is due to data limitations, but we saw several signs it’s not working as well as it could. Federal law requires states to assist parents in collecting monthly childcare payments. In Kansas, the Department for Children and Families is the primary state agency responsible for administering the state’s child support program. Kansas court trustees also can provide child support services, but they generally only provide enforcement services. A small number of parents we talked to expressed frustration and a lack of communication, regardless of whether they were served through DCF or court trustees. Kansas’s dual track child support system may create unequal costs for some Kansas parents. It also prevented us from evaluating the state’s child support system as a whole. DCF’s outdated computer system prevented us from determining how timely and effective its services are. We relied on 4 federal performance benchmarks as indicators of DCF’s child support performance. In recent years, DCF performed well on federal requirements to establish child support cases, but not on requirements to enforce those cases. DCF officials told us the difficult nature of their cases and certain administrative hurdles make it difficult to enforce child support payments. DCF and its contractors don’t have the tools to quickly identify and address delinquent payments. DCF’s use of federal performance measures to monitor contractors’ performance is too simplistic to identify poor performance. Kansas’s low national rankings in child support enforcement may be due to the state’s unique system and outdated technology. Kansas’s child support services through DCF and its contractors performed worse on federal enforcement benchmarks than most other states. Kansas’s trustee option appears to be unique compared to other states, which may skew its national performance metrics. Kansas’s DCF child support services did not have key computer system features and collection tools that some other states had.

In Kansas, groundwater is managed by multiple state and local agencies, including the Kansas Water Office, the Department of Agriculture, and groundwater management districts. In 1972, the legislature established the process by which local voters can form groundwater management districts. Local voters have established 5 districts in central and western Kansas. Groundwater management districts provide input but have little independent authority over many important state groundwater policies and actions. State law only requires groundwater management districts to do a few things, including having and reviewing a management program. All 5 groundwater management districts had a management program as required by state law, but we identified a few concerns with how those programs are reviewed and revised. Groundwater management districts currently operate programs related to data collection, research, and public education which appear reasonable for the purposes of groundwater management districts. In 2021, the 5 districts spent a total of $6.1 million, mostly on salaries and benefits and professional services. Overall, an estimated 75% of districts' expenditures were for programs related to an area of concern the district identified. In the last 10 years, 3 of the 5 groundwater management districts experienced overall water level declines but we could not evaluate water quality. Last, we could not determine the impact district programs had on these trends but some research suggest some positive results.

This audit reviewed three aspects of elections in Kansas, including training, electronic vote records, and policies and processes in long-term care facilities. With regard to training, we couldn't tell whether county election officers received adequate training and we found most counties either didn't or coun't show they had trained all election workers before the 2022 general election. Each of Kansas’s 105 counties has a county election officer responsible for overseeing all elections in the county. This includes appointing election workers who perform frontline election duties. But state law has almost no requirements related to training county election officers and workers, and no one tracks county election officers’ training. However, county election officers we surveyed still reported feeling well prepared to oversee federal elections. With regard to electronic vote records, we found that 6 Kansas counties we reviewed use scanners to record and tally voters’ paper ballots that are also capable of producing digital copies of those ballots. But nothing requires county election officials in Kansas to create or use digital copies, which meant some counties created and used them and others didn't. None of the counties we reviewed made digital copies public. We compared Kansas to 5 other states. Those states generally used digital copies similar to Kansas. However, some other states made them public. Finally, with regard to processes for protecting voting in long-term care facilities, facility and county election officials described having a few basic practices. The national literature on this topic is sparse and much of it dated, but it identified a few practices to address fraud and undue influence. Kansas has a few basic laws related to fraud and undue influence, but nothing specifically for long-term care.

The Department of Commerce has 5 major incentive programs that it uses to incent economic development in Kansas. Those programs are the High Performance Incentive Program (HPIP), Job Creation Fund (JCF), Kansas Industrial Training (KIT), Kansas Industrial Retraining (KIR), and Promoting Employment Across Kansas (PEAK). As part of this audit, we used a research-based model to estimate the economic impacts, tax effects, and total return on investment for 28 projects that we selected. Based on model results from those 28 projects, we estimate all 5 of Commerce’s major economic development incentive programs will generate positive total returns on investment. However, we estimate they won’t cover their own costs to the state through higher tax revenues. For example, all 5 programs appeared to generate economic impacts that are greater than their costs. But none of the programs appear to generate enough tax effects to cover their costs.

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We completed 21 audits on 16 agencies and 4 school districts between CY 2020 and 2022 (1 entity was audited twice during this time period). This summary report shows 10 of the 21 entities did not substantially comply with applicable IT security standards and best practices. Entities struggled with properly scanning and patching their computers. Entities also had compliance problems because they did not create, maintain, or test incident response plans or continuity of operations plans. Other significant issues included poor security awareness training or failed social engineering tests. Almost half the entities had significant management, contract, or policy-related weaknesses. Additional security weaknesses included inadequate account security controls, poor encryption, back up, or destruction processes of sensitive data. We also noted several entities had inadequate network boundary protection or had poor access or environmental controls for their data centers. Lastly, we identified significant security issues within agencies’ specific IT systems. The findings in this report are similar to those in previous summary IT reports. The main reasons for compliance problems across the 20 entities included insufficient top management attention and inadequate resources.

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To increase connectivity in unserved and underserved areas in Kansas in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kansas Department of Commerce (Commerce) and other stakeholders developed the Connectivity Emergency Response Grants program in 2020. The program received $50 million in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Commerce awarded about $48.5 million of that funding in connectivity grants to the internet service providers and Kansas communities that applied. 66 grants went to 39 entities across seven regions of Kansas. South Central Kansas received about $14 million. Southwest Kansas received about $11 million. Northeast Kansas received about $9 million. Southeast and East Central Kansas received just over $5 million each. North Central and Northwest Kansas received around $550,000 or less. The North Central and Northwest regions also requested the least in CERG funding.

In response to the COVID pandemic, the federal government enacted six major relief bills totaling over $5 trillion. The federal government allocated about $34 billion to the state of Kansas. Out of that, the state had discretion on how to spend about $2.6 billion. In May 2020, the governor established the Office of Recovery and created a taskforce to distribute and administer certain COVID relief funds. The state distributed CARES Act discretionary funding through a 3 round process that involved the SPARK taskforce and the State Finance Council. About $1.6 billion in ARPA funds are currently being distributed through legislative appropriation and the SPARK taskforce. The state's distribution of CARES Act funding appeared appropriate and reasonable. Most of the CARES Act expenditures we reviewed were likely allowable under federal spending rules. However, some expenditures appeared wasteful or raised other concerns even though the expenditure may be allowable under federal rules. Federal rules likely contributed to the problems we encountered.

Virtual school programs are an alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Most of the state-run virtual school programs we identified still allowed local districts to operate virtual school programs, but we could not compare student outcomes or expenditures between states. In Kansas, local school districts operate virtual school programs. 105 school districts out of the 286 Kansas school districts spent at least $50 million on virtual school programs in the 2020-21 school year. We reviewed 4 state-run models, 3 of which also offered district operated virtual school programs like Kansas. A lack of data limited our comparison of other states' virtual school program expenditures and outcomes. Data reliability issues prevented us from evaluating outcomes for virtual students in Kansas.