NICA Responds to the Auditor General’s Audit

We actively cooperated with the Auditor General’s audit, and we appreciate the time and care put into this inquiry and the report. Our overarching priority is to care for every child and family in our program and to be prudent guardians of the resources entrusted to us for their long-term needs. We are never complacent about our mission and the people we serve in terms of what we do and how we do it. NICA has already put into place corrections and controls for the findings identified in the report, including designing a Quick Reference Benefit List which is on the website now, re-designing the web site to make it more user friendly, amending the Benefit Handbook and Plan of Operations to fully comply and be easily understandable. We are grateful for the participation of the families who responded to the auditors’ survey and were gratified that 84% of respondents indicated that NICA timely and appropriately responded to their questions. But we are committed to doing a better job at meeting families’ need for information and explanation and have taken the first of a number of continuing steps, including making the handbook easier to understand and initiating the redesign of the NICA system to track and respond to benefit inquiries and requests with consistent responses and messaging. We will be reporting our progress to the families we serve and the Florida Legislature on an ongoing basis.