Thinklytics

City of San Antonio · Government · San Antonio, TX · 16 weeks

Municipal data quality program established across 12 departments

The City of San Antonio faced data quality issues across 12 departments that threatened $4.1 million in federal grant funding. We developed and implemented a targeted data quality program that fixed the errors and set up continuous monitoring to safeguard their funding moving forward.

Challenge

A federal audit found serious data quality issues in grant reports from 12 city departments. The problems included inconsistent beneficiary counts, missing outcome metrics, and duplicate service records. The city faced a 90-day deadline to fix these errors or lose $4.1 million in federal funding.

Approach

In the first two weeks, we assessed all 12 departments, focusing on those with the highest funding risk. We created tailored remediation plans for each department and implemented a centralized data quality monitoring system to track compliance with federal reporting requirements in real time.

Outcome

We helped all 12 departments pass the federal re-audit, securing $4.1M in grant funding. We built a data quality monitoring platform that continuously checks compliance with federal reporting rules and sends automated alerts if any department’s data drops below the required standards.

Figuring Out Which Accounts Are Really at Funding Risk

Twelve departments were dealing with shaky funding. We focused first on the top three, since they controlled $8.4M of the $12M that was at risk. Sorting out their problems quickly meant we secured most of the city’s funding right away. After that, we moved on to the other nine departments.

We spotted duplicate service records throwing off the data. So, we rolled up our sleeves and cleaned it up.

Here’s what we saw: 8 of the 12 departments had a mess of duplicate service records. Their intake systems weren’t lining up IDs properly. So, we built a nightly deduplication pipeline tailored for each team. Every night, it scrubbed out duplicates and gave us clean, reliable beneficiary counts without fail.

We put nonstop monitoring in place so we’d spot problems long before they turned into big headaches.

Every night, we kick off 80 automated data checks to make sure everything lines up with federal reporting rules. If any department’s data slips up, our data coordinator gets a quick alert showing exactly which records need fixing. No fuss, just clear and simple.

Results

  • $4.1M Federal grant funding preserved
  • 12 Departments remediated
  • 90 days Remediation completed on time
  • 0 Deficiencies in re-audit

We had just 90 days to fix problems across 12 departments or we’d lose $4.1 million in federal funding. Thinklytics helped us zero in on the biggest risks first, and we passed the re-audit without any problems.

Chief Data Officer, City of San Antonio

In the client's terms

The question

Where does this number come from, and can the path be trusted?

The situation

A federal audit found data quality failures in grant reporting across twelve departments: inconsistent beneficiary counts, missing outcome metrics, duplicate service records. Ninety days to remediate or lose $4.1M in funding.

What we found

Twelve departments had twelve versions of the problem and very different amounts of money at risk. Treating them as one programme would have spent the ninety days evenly across departments where the exposure was not even.

What it produced

All twelve passed the federal re-audit with no deficiencies, preserving $4.1M in grant funding. The monitoring platform now checks compliance continuously and alerts when a department's data falls below the federal standard.

The roadmap

Two weeks assessing all twelve, ordered by funding at risk rather than by severity of finding. A remediation plan per department against its own failures. A central quality monitor built alongside, tracking federal reporting compliance in real time so the next audit is not a discovery exercise.

The work behind this result

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Frequently asked questions

How do you remediate federal grant reporting failures under a deadline?

Order the work by money at risk. The City of San Antonio had twelve departments flagged and 90 days; three of them held $8.4M of the $12M exposed, so those went first. All twelve passed the re-audit with no deficiencies and $4.1M in grant funding was preserved.

What causes inconsistent beneficiary counts in grant reporting?

Usually intake rather than reporting. Eight of San Antonio's twelve departments had duplicate service records because their intake systems were not matching identifiers. A nightly deduplication pipeline per department is what made beneficiary counts reportable.

How do you stay compliant with federal reporting after remediation?

Continuous checking. San Antonio now runs automated checks nightly against federal reporting requirements, and when a department falls out of compliance its data coordinator is alerted with the specific records at fault rather than a general warning.