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NLPES Conference Notes

Moderator: Jane Thesing, Assistant Director, Legislative Audit Council, South Carolina

NLPES Awards: Criteria and Process
Jane Thesing gave a brief presentation about this topic.

Types of awards

• Excellence in Evaluation
• Excellence in Research Methods
• Certificate of Recognition of Impact
• Outstanding Achievement Award (individual)

• Excellence in Evaluation criteria include:
• Meets a legislative need.
• Communicates quickly and clearly.
• Projects credibility.

• Research design is unique/innovative and appropriate to address objectives.
• Research methods are articulated in the report.
• Research methods interpreted for the reader and used to develop conclusions and recommendations.

• Panel of judges selected by NLPES executive committee.
• Application process designed to be easy.
• Applications due in May.
• NLPES website has details.

Leslie Marks from Utah's Legislative Auditor General made a brief presentation about their award for "Best Practices for Good Management" brochure. Ms. Marks explained that the brochure project was a departure from the office's traditional audit role. The brochure was prompted by legislation that stressed recognizing the need to give more guidance to program staff early on instead of waiting several years and then auditing what has already been done. The new mandate required ongoing responsibilities including follow-up with programs and possible future audit assignments. Below is a summary of the steps that were taken to develop the brochure and follow-up procedures.

• Develop a list of best practices.
• Identify new programs/agencies after each legislative session.
• Provide a brochure and explanation of the best practices to the program manager and staff.
• Within a year, send a self-evaluation survey to the new program managers asking about policies, performance measures, and data collection, among other topics.
• Within two years after creation, send a second, more detailed self-evaluation.
• Analyze the two years' surveys, and if questions arise, recommend to the committee that a limited scope audit be done on the program.

The remainder of Ms. Marks presentation included a discussion of:

• How they researched criteria for list of best practices.
• How they developed the tone and format of the brochure by using a list serve request, brainstorming, and feedback from the agency.
• The results of the first year's events and first follow-up.

Daniel Oney from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission of the Virginia General Assembly presented the research methodology they used in the report "Estimating the Costs of Raising Children." Mr. Oney discussed the need for more realistic guidelines in estimating the costs of raising children in order to meet the federal requirement for states to develop presumptive guidelines to be used to set child support levels. Mr. Oney presented an overview of the four steps they took for estimating the costs of raising children. They are as follows:

Measure each household's spending in seven major categories.

• Identify the proportion due to children for each category.
• Calculate household spending on children for each category.
• Using a regression analysis, estimate prevailing spending on children using monthly expenditures and annual income as the variables.

Mr. Oney explained the three key innovations underlying the methodology were:

• Using a logarithmic regression models to estimate cost curves.
• Develops the "average use" option for attributing costs to children.
• Provides a framework for making policy choices.
• The full report can be viewed at http://jlarc.state.va.us/reports/rpt252.pdf