The report, released Friday by State Auditor Brian Sonntag, comes on the heels of Gov. Chris Gregoire ordering state agencies earlier this month to reduce phone costs as the state grapples with a nearly $2 billion budget shortfall over the next two years.
Sonntag said his office analyzed state-funded mobile devices between March 2010 and February 2011 after hearing that other states achieved big cost savings after making changes to cellphone policies.
The Auditor’s Office reviewed the use of some 22,000 cellphones assigned to 89 state agencies. The phones were purchased through multiple carriers – including Verizon, Sprint and AT&T – and the contracts were maintained by the Department of Information Services, according to Sonntag’s office.
In the one-year analysis, auditors found:
• The state spent $9.2 million on cellphone use.
• Some 6,679, phones, accounting for $1.8 million in costs, were used less than 30 minutes per month or not at all.
• Many phones were locked into inefficient plans that resulted in fees that wouldn’t be charged if the agency had a more appropriate cellphone contract. Auditors found one phone that cost the state $434 a month when the same level of service was available for $100 a month from another plan.
“This is money that does not need to be spent, obviously. The fact it was screams for attention,” Sonntag said.
Sonntag said his office only evaluated the state’s largest agencies. There is no clear figure on how many cellphones in all the state pays for, he said.
The Auditor’s Office has recommended that agencies turn in all unused or little-used phones, use more prepaid phones, offer stipends to employees to use their personal phones for state business and contract with a cellphone optimization specialist who can match phone use with cost-effective plans.
Sonntag wrote in the report that if the state “optimizes” cellphone plans it could save $9 million to $18 million over the next five years. Focusing on having the right cellphone plans helped California achieve a 28 percent cost savings, the Auditor’s report said.
After Gregoire issued her directive, the Office of Financial Management pushed agencies to ensure that phones and plans are assigned only to employees who need them for work, to monitor monthly cellphone bills, to eliminate office or landline phones where possible and to report all changes to their office by February.
In its response to the audit, OFM pointed out that agencies have been changing their cellphone use in recent months or years.
The Department of Social and Health Services canceled 1,113 phones, the Department of Corrections canceled 430 phones and the Department of Labor and Industries canceled 142 phones. Between the reductions and cost-saving measures, the state is saving more than $732,000 a year, OFM said.
“We are clamping down. It makes sense,” said Thomas Shapley, spokesman for the Department of Social and Health Services. “The phones we cut were the ones that needed to be deactivated, ones that had little or no use and no justification for security or emergency-management reasons.”
