The California Department of Education’s plan to consolidate and build a single Web-based application for its Standardized Account Code System (SACS) is up in the air despite selection of a vendor for the project earlier this year.
A Legislative Analyst’s Office report released last week said that the 2015-16 state budget includes $12.2 million for the SACS upgrade, but the project in total was expected to cost $21 million. The LAO said the Department of Technology canceled the project on Aug. 12 because of “insufficient funding.”
The California Department of Education (CDE) explained its near-term plan for SACS in an email to Techwire this week:
“While the various technologies and components used by SACS is no longer supported by its respective software vendors, CDE is in the process of replacing two obsolete components to allow the system to continue to function in a current Windows environment. This short-term fix does not resolve the overall obsolescence of SACS (i.e., outdated and unsupported programming language), nor does it resolve one of the main objectives of the project, that is the consolidation of the four separate major system components into one integrated Web-based application. However, it does provide the CDE more time to evaluate and determine next steps in resolving the software issue.”
CDE noted that the project contractor, M Corp, has agreed to extend its pricing for the system upgrade work through November 2015.
The Department of Technology initially approved the SACS upgrade in 2011, with a $5.9 million project budget.
CDE created the SACS system in response to 1994 state legislation tightening fiscal accountability for schools – known as “local educational agencies” (LEA). Reporting fields inputted into the system include “fund, resource, project year, instructional goal, function, object, and school for every general ledger accounting transaction,” according to state records.
The SACS software in use dates back to 1998; unsupported components include Visual Basic 6.0, Excel 97, Sybase SQL Anywhere 5.0 and Formula One – ActiveX Component. CDE says half of its divisions are SACS stakeholders, and schools also use the software themselves for reporting financial data.
