California 's budget data is getting a boost from the state's centralized financial accounting system, called FI$Cal.
For the first time, California is presenting its enacted state budget with the same amount of detail as the proposed budget that comes out earlier in the year, FI$Cal officials told Techwire on Tuesday.
The enhanced data from the 2016-17 state budget is publicly available online at the Department of Finance website. New features include the addition of fund conditions by name and code, printable budget documents, more program-level detail, a new Major Program Changes section, and more.
The Department of Finance has been using FI$Cal for two budget cycles, but the additional detail in this year's enacted budget is a big milestone, said FI$Cal project director Neeraj Chauhan.
"We are very proud of it — the Department of Finance is very proud of it — because this replaces four legacy systems on the Department of Finance side. And this is the first time they have all the budget information in one system," Chauhan said.
Previously the enacted budget lacked detail and typically contained only limited information about statutorily required changes, said Tamma Adamek, deputy director of strategic planning and communications.
"What this does is makes it digital; it puts it all in one place and it's current. It's updated from the changes that have happened since January when [the budget] was originally introduced," Adamek said.
To generate the budget, FI$Cal runs PeopleSoft and Hyperion on the back end. Chauhan said during this second budget cycle, time was spent on fine-tuning the technical side and making internal processes faster and more efficient. FI$Cal also has invested in training end-users of the system.
"I think the project staff has matured. We know more about the system. It's been two years in the system, so a lot of my business staff are more knowledgeable about the system and have been able to help our end-users better," Chauhan said.
The data from the enacted budget eventually will flow into a transparency website that's scheduled to be developed in a future phase of the FI$Cal project. FI$Cal is beginning to analyze what data sets could be published and which are meaningful, Chauhan said.
