BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB 271
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|Author: |Obernolte |
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|Version: |May 28, 2015 Hearing |
| |Date: July 8, 2015 |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant:|Olgalilia Ramirez |
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Subject: Child care: alternative payment programs and
contractors: electronic records: digital signatures
Note: This bill has been referred to the Committees on
Education and Human Services. A "do pass" motion should include
referral to the Committee on Human Services
SUMMARY
This bill expands the existing authority of Alternative Payment
Programs (APP) and child care providers to use electronic
methods for storage of documents or records and use of digital
signatures pursuant to current state standards, as specified.
BACKGROUND
Existing law authorizes local government agencies or non-profit
organizations to contract with the California Department of
Education (CDE) to operate APPs and provide alternative payments
and support services to parents and child development providers.
APPs help parents arrange child care services and make payments
directly to the provider, which may be in-home care, family
child care or center-based care, and either licensed or
license-exempt. (Education Code § 8220)
Existing law establishes requirements and procedures that APPs
and child development providers must follow as contracted
agencies with the CDE, including but not limited to tracking and
reporting of attendance, accounting and auditing requirements,
and reimbursement and payment procedures. (EC § 8221.5)
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Current regulations require child care and development providers
that contract with APPs to submit periodic reports that must
include:
1)Days and hours of enrollment and attendance.
2)Total days of operation.
3)Services, revenues and expenditures relating to care provided
for subsidized and unsubsidized children.
Parents are required to physically sign-in and sign-out their
child when they drop off and pick up their child each day.
(California Code of Regulations, Title 5, § 18065)
Existing law requires agencies that receive state funds to, at
the request of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, make
all records pertaining to its state-funded programs available to
the California Department Education (CDE), as specified, and
requires that all records be retained by each agency for at
least five years, as specified.
(EDC § 33421)
Existing law authorizes alternative payment programs and
providers and other contractors providing child care development
services to maintain records in electronic format if the
original documents were created in electronic format. (EC §
8262.1)
ANALYSIS
This bill expands the existing authority of Alternative Payment
Programs (APP) and child care providers to use electronic
methods for storage of documents or records pursuant to current
law and the standards for trustworthy electronic document
preservation under state regulations. Specifically this bill:
1)Authorizes APPs and child care providers to maintain child care
records electronically and requires any conversion from a
paper record to an electronic format, as well as the storage
of the electronic record to comply with the specified state
standards for electronic document or record preservation.
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2)Authorizes APPs and child care providers to use digital
signatures and requires a digital signature to have the same
force and effect as the manual signature provided that the
requirements for digital signatures and their acceptable
technology satisfy state standards, as specified.
3)Deletes the requirement that APPs and child care providers only
store records electronically if the original documents were
created in electronic format.
4)Extends the existing five year requirements for the storage of
original records, as specified to all records including
electronic records as described in this bill.
5)Makes other non-substantive technical changes.
STAFF COMMENTS
1)Need for the bill. According to the author current law governing
the use of technology for child care contractors fail to
reflect recent technological advances. The author further
asserts that local child care agencies and contractors are
expending dollars and resources to store paper copies of case
files dating back five to seven years. This bill seeks to give
APPs and child care providers the option of storing documents
electronically and the ability to use digital signatures on
records.
2)Alternative Payment Programs (APP). APPs are funded with state
and federal funds and offer vouchers to parents that allow
them choose care from licensed or license-exempt child care
providers, such as in-home care, family child care, and
center-based care. APPs help families arrange child care
services through referral networks and make payments for those
services directly to the child care provider selected by the
family. Statewide, there are currently 76 APPs contracted
with CDE.
3)System for Preserving Documents. Current law requires uniform
statewide standards for the purpose of storing and recording
documents in electronic media to be approved and adopted by
the Secretary of State in accordance with the American
National Standards Institute or the Association for
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Information and Image Management (AIIM). These standards
specify that in order to ensure that official electronic
documents are considered to be a true and an accurate copy of
the original information received and before the original copy
may be destroyed, at least two separate copies of the official
document must be created to meet the following AIIM standards:
a) Copies are stored using both hardware and media storage
methodologies.
b) The system for storing copies must ensure that there is
no plausible way for electronically stored information to
be modified, altered, or deleted during the approved
information lifecycle.
c) At least one copy of the electronic document or record
must not permit unauthorized additions, deletions, or
changes to the original document and that is to be stored
and maintained in a safe and separate location.
Additionally, any information being scanned, or electronically
received or stored should be stored using industry accepted
format such as JPEG, JBIG, JPEG 2000, or PDF-A.
This bill seeks to authorize APPs and child care providers
that use at minimum the system described above in order to
reduce costs of maintaining original documents.
1)Digital Signature. Current regulations establish criteria for
public entities using digital signature of technology.
Acceptable technology must be capable of creating signatures
that are unique to the person using it, capable of
verification, under sole control of the person using it and
cannot be altered. The regulations also provide
recommendations of acceptable digital signature technology.
This bill attempts to authorize digital signatures to have the
same effect as a manual signature.
2)Auditing. The Child Care and Development Services Act requires
an independent financial and compliance audit of organizations
that contract with California Department of Education (CDE)
under direct service contracts. Current law also requires
agencies that receive state funds to, at the request of the
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Superintendent of Public Instruction, make all records
pertaining to its state-funded programs available to the CDE
and requires that all records be retained by each agency for
at least five years. This bill extends the existing five year
requirements for the storage of original records to all
records including electronic documents and records. It is
unclear how the use of electronic records, if at all, will
impact audit procedures by CDE. Concerns were raised on prior
versions of this bill regarding the integrity of
electronically stored documents. The bill has since been
amended to comply with existing state standards for storing
electronic documents as described in staff comment 3 and 4.
3)Prior legislation.
AB 2101 (Levine, 2014) similar to this bill, would have
allowed alternative payment programs and child care providers
to maintain and retain records electronically and expanded the
list of types of records that can be maintained
electronically. AB 2101 died in the Assembly Appropriations
Committee.
SUPPORT
California Alternative Payment Program (CAPPA)
California State PTA
OPPOSITION
None received.
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