Arkansas

Arkansas tried to jump forward into the 21st century a few years ago when it began to replace its fractious modules of information technology with a unified enterprise-wide planning system. With the Arkansas Administrative Statewide Information System (AASIS), the state sought to bring functions such as financial management and accounting, asset management, procurement, payroll and benefits administration into one single, Web-based system.

Or that was the idea, anyway. It didn’t work. Right after the state payroll went on AASIS in July 2001, more than 500 state employees failed to get a paycheck. The initial $30 million price tag ballooned to $60 million. Before long, phrases like “management boondoggle” started leaping to mind.

Disagreements over the integrity of the system caused the state’s chief information officer, Randall Bradford, to leave his job in June 2002. Some say he quit and others maintain that he was fired. But whichever is true, Bradford was probably one of the luckiest people associated with the project, because things just turned from bad to worse. A state audit one year after implementation challenged its accuracy and reliability. According to the audit, only 14 of 182 agencies found that AASIS had improved the efficiency of routine tasks. By the fall of 2002, some legislators were advocating abandonment of the system altogether. In March 2004, the budget office sought $2 million to move away from it for budget functions. Many of the initial kinks, both in technology and training, now appear to have been worked out, but the system will likely never work to the potential the state expected.

Money B- Long-Term Outlook Budget Process Structural Balance Contracting/Purchasing Financial Controls/Reporting People C Strategic Workforce Planning Hiring Retaining Employees Training and Development Managing Employee Performance Infrastructure C+ Capital Planning Project Monitoring Maintenance Internal Coordination Intergovernmental Coordination Information C+ Strategic Direction Budgeting for Performance Managing for Performance Program Evaluation Electronic Government • Population (rank): 2,673,400 (33) • Average per capita income (rank):    $24,289 (49) • Total state spending (rank):    $11,520,781,000 (32) • Spending per capita (rank):    $4,257 (30) • Governor: Mike Huckabee (R) • Took office: 07/1996 • Senate: 35 members: 27 D, 8 R • Term Limits: 8 years (lifetime) • House: 100 members: 72 D, 28 R • Term Limits: 6 years (lifetime)

To add insult to injury, a lawsuit claimed that the system was inaccessible to disabled users. The court decided that there was merit in the case, and now all non-critical functions of AASIS that are still inaccessible to the blind have been shut down until it is brought up to code.

The practical result of this chaos has been a decline in state management capacity on several fronts, notably personnel recruitment. That couldn’t come at a worse time, because employees are leaving Arkansas state government in droves. One out of every seven state workers left in fiscal 2003, giving Arkansas the highest turnover in the nation. Curiously, the state doesn’t seem to perceive that ranking as a problem. The state’s workforce planning is ad hoc and informal at best. “We do have an aging workforce, and agencies are cognizant of that,” says Twana Porter, of the Office of Personnel Management. “[The state is] looking at succession planning for when those folks do retire.” But there has been little progress so far.

Part of the problem is that the state’s method for evaluating new employees varies from agency to agency. Some agencies claim to assess all new employees within six months; at least one agency, however, doesn’t evaluate new hires at all. The whole system is not conducive to retaining the kind of employees the state is going to need to move ahead in the coming years.

Similarly disjointed is the capital planning process. Arkansas has no statewide blueprint for its capital investments, and its agencies rarely look at infrastructure needs beyond the biennial budget. The Highway and Transportation Department does not include operating and maintenance costs in planning projects, and highway maintenance has been underfunded for the past five years. In the last budget, the state did not spend any money at all on maintenance of state buildings.

Despite its information-gathering problems, Arkansas is in the initial stages of an effort to link performance data with appropriations. It began moving toward a performance-based budget in 1999 with a pilot program, which was expanded to 10 agencies in 2001. More agencies will be added over the next few years. The modest pace is a purposeful attempt to address performance measurement issues before they become problems, says budget director Mike Stormes. “We’ve taken it very, very slowly,” he says. “The legislative and executive branches have been very patient with agencies. When we’ve hit roadblocks or things that don’t work, we were able to go back with the agency and figure out something else.”

For additional data and analysis, go to: http://results.gpponline.org/arkansas

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