California has the next three years to sort out what data to make public on a new transparency website that will be attached to the state's accounting system.
As Techwire reported earlier this week, some expenditure language that dictates what information will be presented on the transparency portal was struck from the state's budget deal, according to a Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer.
The public go-live date for the transparency website has been pushed back to mid-2019 — two years later than Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) managers initially conceived — as part of a larger revamped project schedule.
A source at FI$Cal said the project team still wants to provide as much data as possible through the transparency website even though the expenditure language isn't as prescriptive as it used to be. There are no technical limitations within the FI$Cal system that would prevent data from being released, the source added.
Before it was struck by the Legislature, the expenditure language appeared to require data such as transaction type, the name of the recipient receiving funds, the expenditure amount, and more.
FI$Cal will now have more flexibility to include a broader set of data, including state expenditures, Palmer said.
In the past, some transparency advocates have criticized the quality of California's accounting data. California has consistently been a bottom dweller in annual transparency rankings from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.
Some have interpreted the changes to FI$Cal that were negotiated in the budget deal to be a step back.
"Lack of transparency is the breeding ground for corruption, abusive spending, and public distrust," State Treasurer John Chiang said in a statement this week to Techwire. "I urge the Governor and lawmakers to reconsider their decision to water down commitments that were made years ago and that are necessary for a functional democracy.”
The transparency website is just one component of the FI$Cal project, which is modernizing technology and business processes statewide.
In July, FI$Cal is planning to go-live with a new release that will upgrade PeopleSoft 9.2, add statewide budget functionality through Hyperion 2.0, and offer a new Business Intelligence Enterprise program.
FI$Cal will temporarily shut down from July 22 through July 29 because of the "interdependency of the moving parts of this release," according to the project's monthly newsletter.
