Appendix A: Definitions
DFPS Asset Management Handbook February 2011
Annual inventory—A complete physical inventory of all property in the possession of a state agency. The inventory must be completed by the date established by the Texas comptroller of Public Accounts.
Property manager—Person designated by the DFPS commissioner to be the custodian of all agency capitalized, controlled, non-capitalized, and trust property, and responsible for maintaining the required records.
Assets held in trust—Assets held by an agency on behalf of a non-state entity (such as art collections owned by families, estates, and other individuals or entities) and which are under the agency’s temporary control.
Capitalized assets—State-owned assets valued at $5,000 or greater per unit, with an estimated useful life of more than one year. Capitalized assets are assigned asset ID numbers and accounted for in the State Property Accounting (SPA) System using appropriate accounting methods, as required by Texas comptroller policy and procedures. For a listing of assets, see Appendix B.
Controlled assets—Capital assets that have a value less than $5,000; however due to its high-risk nature, is required by the comptroller to be reported to SPA. Controlled assets are not reported in an agency’s annual financial report. The comptroller’s controlled asset list is located at Appendix C.
Damaged or non-functional hard disk drive—Hard disk drives and devices suspected of being non-functional may still contain retrievable data, and must be destroyed in a way that verifies that the data has been destroyed.
Division directors, regional directors and supervisors—Agency management of a relevant mail code responsible for inventoried property in their area and who ensures that records are maintained under their control.
Regional Inventory Coordinators—RAS personnel responsible for knowing DFPS policies and procedures on asset management and security, and support general care and control of assets assigned in their designated regions. Coordinators enter data in the HHSAS asset module, ensure inventoried items are appropriately tagged, assist in appropriate identification and disposal of surplus and salvage property, and serve as the primary contact for asset management in their designated area.
Loan—The non-permanent reassignment or loan of inventoried personal property to another department or individual for state business.
Mail code—A four-digit, alphanumeric code that functions as the business unit for DFPS programs in executive offices, regional offices, and health care facilities.
Missing property—Equipment whose disappearance cannot be explained.
Negligent conduct—The employee did not intend to cause the result that happened, but failed to exercise a reasonable duty of care to prevent that result (which includes failing to become aware of the risk of that result). Example 1: employee left tablet PC in an unlocked vehicle, resulting in its theft. Example 2: curious about the configuration of electronic hardware, employee dismantles table PC, resulting in damage.
Non-capitalized property—Items not considered capitalized or controlled assets and valued at less than $5,000 per unit. They are not assigned property numbers, but do have a tag affixed indicating property of DFPS.
Prudent judgment—Ensuring that property is stored in an area that provides the highest security for equipment storage.
Real property—Land, buildings, facilities, improvements to land or buildings, and infrastructure.
Reasonable care—Actions taken by the DFPS employee to ensure all state property assigned to the employee is properly maintained and secured, readily locatable, and definitively identifiable by assigned responsibility. The employee exercises good judgment at all times in caring for the property.
Responsible person—A DFPS employee entrusted with state property who may or may not be the primary user, ensuring the state property is used for state purposes only, is properly maintained and secured, and can be located at any time.
Salvage property—Any personal property that, through use, time, or accident is depleted, worn out, damaged, consumed, outdated, obsolete, or cannot serve its original purpose.
Sanitization—Before sending to surplus, the purging of all software and data from computers and electronic storage devices, including hard drives, laptop computers, servers, main frame computers, and handheld computers, utilizing at least a three-pass binary overwrite method.
State Property Accounting (SPA) System—The centralized state inventory system administered and maintained by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Stolen property—Property that the agency has reasonable cause to believe has been stolen via forced removal, burglary, or by some other criminal act.
Surplus property—Any property the state no longer currently needs nor anticipates needing in the foreseeable future. Surplus property may be new or used, but must have additional useful life.
Trade-in property—Surplus or salvage property that, in the best interest of the state, is exchanged for new property of the same general type.