Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability - Products

Products

OPPAGA provides a variety of research services.

• Reports evaluate state agencies and programs and analyze specific policy issues. Reports cover a variety of state agencies and issues, or analyze the impact of a potential program or policy.
• Progress reports follow-up on the findings and recommendations of previously issued reports. A progress report is issued no sooner than 18 months after publication of the original report.
• PolicyCasts are three to five minute narrated PowerPoint presentations that provide overviews of OPPAGA reports. PolicyCasts present the report's big picture, highlighting the most critical details.
• The Government Program Summaries (GPS) is an online encyclopedia of more than 200 major state government programs. It provides a basic program description, highlights recent issues related to the program, includes the latest budget information, and lists contact information and recent reports.
• The Florida Monitor Weekly is a free, electronic newsletter that is delivered to over 5,500 recipients per week. Issued every Friday, the newsletter provides policy makers, government administrators, and other interested parties with links to OPPAGA reports as well as publications by state and federal agencies, think tanks, and the media.

OPPAGA researches all aspects of state government and conducts work through four policy areas - Criminal Justice; Education; Government operations; and Health and Human Services. A staff director heads each policy area. The following list provides examples of recent work completed by each policy area.

• Criminal Justice: Reviewed the possibility of creating pilot programs to use intermediate sanctions for some non-violent offenders (Report 10-27, March 2010). The review found that these options may be appropriate for a large number of Florida’s criminal justice population, as over 70% of new prison admissions and 40% of current prisoners are non-violent offenders, and the state could save $387,989 to $1.2 million for every 100 prisoners diverted from incarceration.
• Education: Studied whether it would be feasible to use state-level data on promising occupations and training programs effectiveness to guide the flow of state workforce funding to postsecondary programs (Report 10-26, March 2010). The report concluded that targeted programs do not perform substantially better than non-targeted programs. In addition, the state data sources have some limitations for targeting resources that make it currently infeasible to exclusively use it to direct state funding for career education programs.
• Government operations: Examined the enactment of laws to provide protections and remedies for existing and unregulated Internet poker activities in Florida (Report 09-39, November 2009). Found that if the Legislature wishes to provide consumer protections for Internet poker, it could consider three options: (1) maintain the status quo and monitor federal legislation that would establish a federal licensing system; (2) adopt laws that would prohibit Internet poker; or (3) adopt laws to authorize and regulate intrastate Internet poker.
• Health & Human Services: Evaluated efforts to prevent, detect, deter, and recover funds lost to fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program (Report 10-32, March 2010). Determined that the Agency for Health Care Administration has taken steps to better safeguard Medicaid funds but has not implemented prior recommendations to expand its use of advanced detection methodologies, increase fines on providers that overbill for services, and ensure that managed care plans provide needed services to Medicaid beneficiaries.