Question: Who is
the Workload Driver auditor, and what is the auditing procedure?
Answer:
Franny
Forsman, the former Federal Defender for the District of Nevada, has agreed to
serve as the Workload Driver auditor for the Work Measurement Study. Franny will be conducting preliminary internal "quality control" audits of
randomly-selected offices before each of the fall data collection periods. The results of those early audits will be provided to the office’s Defender and the Steering Group. If necessary further training will be offered before the data collection period to help with quality-control for the drivers.
Franny will then be conducting formal audits of
randomly-selected offices after the two fall data collection periods are
complete. At our request, Mr. Jones has agreed to randomly select the offices and cases to be audited after the fall collection periods. (The cases selected by Mr. Jones will be anonymized numbers provided by dData: client names or court case numbers will not be disclosed).
Franny will audit the coding of Workload Drivers, by requesting proof of the existence of the driver during the timekeeping period. Franny will report the results of her findings
to the Steering Group, DSO, Mr. Jones, and to the Judicial Resource Counsel.
All possible efforts will be made to protect client
confidentiality during these Workload Driver audits. Franny will not reveal the client name or
the case number to anyone but the Defender of the audited office. To the extent possible, publically-available documents (such as filed memoranda, indictments or complaints) will always be the
first recommended proof of a workload driver. We anticipate that almost all
responses to Franny's audit questions will be accomplished via e-mail or calls. We do not anticipate
that the disclosure of the entire case file will ever be necessary.
All Defenders and Executive
Directors will receive a copy of the agreement of auditing terms and the
auditing schedule before Franny begins the review of cases and drivers.
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