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City staff say Salesforce glitch cut applicant responses in public-service grants; appeals adjusted final rankings
Summary
Staff described a text-field parsing error in a new Salesforce application that truncated some grant responses. The public-service grant appeals board rescored eight appeals, approved five and denied three; staff described mitigation steps for next year.
City grant administrators told the Finance Committee on Oct. 21 that a configuration error in a new Salesforce application platform caused some public-service grant (PSG) application text fields to truncate responses, prompting appeals and adjustments to final rankings.
Maribel Figueroa, chief of GRAMA and contract compliance, told the committee that some application text boxes had been created as 'display text' fields and the system misinterpreted characters such as parentheses, asterisks, greater-than signs and certain indentations as syntax codes. "The problem... certain characters that are used are also syntax programming codes such as parentheses and, greater signs and, semicolons... and it confused the system," Figueroa said on the record.
Nut graf: City staff said the glitch mainly affected question 2 (board demographics and similar fields); two applicants alerted staff immediately after the deadline and provided full intended submissions to scorers. The PSG appeals board reviewed eight applications (from six agencies); five appeals were approved and three denied. Staff said rescoring changed some placements but did…
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