{"id":4349,"date":"2022-06-22T20:54:14","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T20:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/?p=4349"},"modified":"2022-06-22T20:54:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T20:54:14","slug":"oca-report-of-investigation-case-2106031-department-of-economic-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/oca-report-of-investigation-case-2106031-department-of-economic-security\/","title":{"rendered":"OCA Report of Investigation (Case #2106031) — Department of Economic Security"},"content":{"rendered":"

The final report for OCA Investigation #2106031 is now available.<\/a><\/p>\n

We investigated a complaint about DES that the agency did not provide a resident with her Unemployment Insurance tax records in a timely manner. \u00a0The complainant requested two years of Unemployment Insurance tax records concerning herself. \u00a0Four months later, she complained to our office that she had not received the records, and we contacted DES.\u00a0 Our office made several attempts to have DES quickly resolve the matter and explain the delay.\u00a0 DES did not provide the records or explain the delay.\u00a0 Following additional contacts with the agency, DES notified us on November 11, 2021 (almost seven months since the complainant requested the records) that it provided the requested records to the complainant.<\/p>\n

In our report, we make the following findings:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. DES acted contrary to law by improperly denying the Complainant\u2019s request for public records.<\/li>\n
  2. DES acted unreasonably and performed in an inefficient or discourteous manner by failing to properly respond to the Complainant\u2019s request or provide her with the requested records in a timely manner. Similarly, DES acted unreasonably by failing to provide a timely explanation for its actions to the OCA.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>We also make the following recommendations:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. We recommend that DES review and take action to improve its response times for fulfilling records requests.<\/li>\n
    2. A: We recommend that DES review and take action to improve its communication with members of the public and its handling of issues raised by the public, particularly those with significant and\/or time-sensitive issues.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      B:\u00a0 We recommend that DES review and take action to improve its communication with the Ombudsman-Citizens\u2019 Aide\u2019s office regarding constituent complaints about DES.<\/p>\n

      C:\u00a0 <\/strong>We recommend that the Legislature consider investigating or auditing DES regarding the agency\u2019s communication with constituents, including how the agency receives and addresses requests and complaints.<\/p>\n

      DES disagreed with the first finding and agreed with the second finding.<\/p>\n

      For the first recommendation DES stated it \u201cwill take action that differs from the recommendation to address the finding.\u201d\u00a0 For the second set of recommendations, DES said \u201c[t]he Department has already implemented the Arizona Ombudsman-Citizens\u2019 Aide recommendations as outlined\u201d in its response to our report.\u00a0 DES\u2019s entire response to our report is included at the end of our report for your review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      We investigated a complaint about DES that the agency did not provide a resident with her Unemployment Insurance tax records in a timely manner.<\/p>\n

      The final report for OCA Investigation #2106031 is now available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4354,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions\/4354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azoca.gov\/staging\/7968\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}