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A Report on A Follow-up Audit on the Department of Public Safety's Texas Gang Intelligence Database

January 2025

Overview

Since the State Auditor's Office issued a prior audit report in August 2022, the Department of Public Safety (Department) has improved certain controls over the submission of data into the Texas Gang Intelligence Database (TxGANG). However, as of November 2024, TxGANG still contained records that were not validated within the federally required timeframes. The two main reasons why those records were not validated within 5 years are: (1) the Department continued to suspend the validation process for individuals who have been incarcerated and (2) the database continued to retain invalid or unreliable data.

The Department implemented new automated controls to help ensure that certain required information is entered when a record is validated in TxGANG. It also developed a report to notify Department staff when the automated record removal process did not work as expected, and it improved its automated controls over batch uploads of TxGANG records.

HIGH

RECORDS VALIDATION AND RETENTION

Of the 65,832 records in TxGANG as of November 5, 2024, 7,199 (10.9 percent) had not been validated within 5 years as required. Of those, 1,245 had not been validated within the last 10 years.

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LOW

AUTOMATED CONTROLS

The Department implemented controls to require validation dates and reviewer names to be entered during validation, notify the Department when a record is not deleted as expected, and help ensure that records submitted via batch uploads contain required information.

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1501 North Congress Ave.
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: (512) 936-9500
Fax: (512) 936-9400
Email: auditor@sao.texas.gov
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