BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 271|
|Office of Senate Floor Analyses | |
|(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | |
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 271
Author: Obernolte (R), et al.
Amended: 5/28/15 in Assembly
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE: 9-0, 7/8/15
AYES: Liu, Runner, Block, Hancock, Leyva, Mendoza, Monning,
Pan, Vidak
SENATE HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE: 5-0, 7/14/15
AYES: McGuire, Berryhill, Hancock, Liu, Nguyen
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 7-0, 8/27/15
AYES: Lara, Bates, Beall, Hill, Leyva, Mendoza, Nielsen
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 80-0, 6/3/15 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Child care: alternative payment programs and
contractors: electronic records: digital signatures
SOURCE: Author
DIGEST: 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.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
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1)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)
2)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)
Current regulations require child care and development
providers that contract with APPs to submit periodic reports
that must include:
a)Days and hours of enrollment and attendance.
b)Total days of operation.
c) 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)
3)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 CDE,
as specified, and requires that all records be retained by
each agency for at least five years, as specified. (EDC §
33421)
4)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)
This bill:
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1)Expands the existing authority of 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.
2)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.
3)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.
4)Deletes the requirement that APPs and child care providers
only store records electronically if the original documents
were created in electronic format.
5)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.
6)Makes other non-substantive technical changes.
Comments
1)Need for the bill. According to the author existing law
governing the use of technology for child care contractors
fails 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. 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
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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. Existing 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
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
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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 the CDE under direct service contracts.
Existing law also 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 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. This bill has since been
amended to comply with existing state standards for storing
electronic documents as described in #3 and #4 above.
Prior Legislation
AB 2101 (Levine, 2014), similar to this bill, would have allowed
APPs and child care providers to maintain and retain records
electronically and would have expanded the list of types of
records that can be maintained electronically. AB 2101 died in
the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:YesLocal: No
According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:
The CDE indicates that this bill will drive one-time costs of
$73,000 to train audit staff, update related auditing
procedures, and participate in the development of regulations.
(Federal funds and General Fund)
The CDE anticipates unknown additional costs for audit
fieldwork to verify systems meet required standards, with
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costs expected to decrease over time. Potential costs could
be between the low tens of thousands to the low hundreds of
thousands. Costs will largely depend on the duration and
complexity of each audit. (Federal funds and General Fund)
SUPPORT: (Verified8/28/15)
California Alternative Payment Program
California State PTA
Knowledge Universe
OPPOSITION: (Verified 8/28/15)
None received
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 80-0, 6/3/15
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Travis Allen, Baker, Bigelow, Bloom,
Bonilla, Bonta, Brough, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chang,
Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Dahle,
Daly, Dodd, Eggman, Frazier, Beth Gaines, Gallagher, Cristina
Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto, Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez,
Gordon, Gray, Grove, Hadley, Harper, Roger Hernández, Holden,
Irwin, Jones, Jones-Sawyer, Kim, Lackey, Levine, Linder,
Lopez, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina,
Melendez, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Olsen,
Patterson, Perea, Quirk, Rendon, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez,
Salas, Santiago, Steinorth, Mark Stone, Thurmond, Ting,
Wagner, Waldron, Weber, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Atkins
Prepared by:Olgalilia Ramirez / ED. / (916) 651-4105
8/30/15 19:42:04
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