1. Update on Financial Transparency Website UGAA Fall Conference
November 30, 2016
Division of Finance
Utah Department of Administrative Services

2. The Utah Transparency Advisory Board (Board) and the Utah Public Finance Website (Website) were created in statute during the general legislative session.
The Board advises the Division of Finance on matters related to the Website.
Purpose of Website: “The Utah Public Finance Website shall permit Utah Taxpayers to view, understand, and track the use of taxpayer dollars……” UC 63A-3-402(2)
The Website is administered by the Division of Finance and operated by Utah Interactive (UI), under contract with the Department of Technology Services.

3. The Website should only include information considered public under the State’s GRAMA statutes.
As required by statute, the Website was first operational in May of
Currently the Website has:
551 Governmental Entities posting data
182 million records
Total of $830 billion

4. Participating entities:
The State of Utah including executive, legislative, and judicial branches and all departments, divisions, agencies, boards, commissions, council, committees, and institutions (colleges and universities).
Counties
Municipalities (cities and towns)
Local Districts
Interlocals
Special Service Districts
School Districts and Charter Schools

5. Participating entities continued:
Independent State entities:
Utah Dairy Commission
Heber Valley Historic Railroad Authority
Utah State Railroad Museum Authority
Utah Housing Corporation
Utah State Fair Corporation
School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration
School and Institutional Trust Fund Office
Utah Communications Authority
Utah Energy Infrastructure Authority
Utah Capital Investment Corporation
Military Installation Development Authority

6. Participating entity does not include:
Workers’ Compensation Fund
Utah State Retirement Office
Taxed Interlocal Entities
Entities with reduced reporting requirements:
Utah Educational Savings Plan
Utah Capital Investment Corporation
Utah Housing Corporation
School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration

7. Requirements for Participating Entities:
Detail Revenues and Expenditures from General Ledger reported quarterly.
Employee Compensation data by Employee name reported annually.
Chief Financial Officers of each participating entity are required to certify on the website, at least annually, that the data uploaded for their entity is accurate and complete.
Link to school report cards published on the State Board of Education’s website. UC 63A-3-402(2)(h)
Annual School Plant Capital Outlay report for all new facilities (no minimum $) or remodels that cost $2 million or more. UC 63A (7)

8. New Direction for Website:
The Website was ground breaking when it was implemented in
Finance is now looking at other website platforms such as Socrata and OpenGov.com.
UI is in the process of moving the Website database to Amazon servers in the cloud for increased speed and upload/download capabilities.
The Board has created a subgroup to determine priorities for updating the Website.
Below are the subgroup’s current priorities for the Website in priority order:

9. SUBGROUP PRIORITIES:
Category
Item Description
Speed and Access
Move power users to new environment give direct access
Long term viability
Application service provider
Developer
Data Richness
Tax incentives information
Platform (MySQL, MS-SQL, Sybase, Oracle, etc.)
Improve notification of upload status (completed)
Improve speed of upload
Public User Interface
Web-site Speed
Keyword Search
Function
Location-based user interface
Advance Query
Dashboards
Exception Reports (Wall of Shame)
Budgets to Actuals
Roll-up by Entity Type such as All K-12 Schools, All Counties, All Municipalities, etc.

10. Recent Developments and Issues:
The State Auditor is withholding state funds from entities who are not complying with the Website’s reporting requirements, resulting in increased compliance.
Budget threshold for reporting to the Website was eliminated. All participating entities, regardless of budget size are required to report. 300 more entities to report. Part-time employee hired by Finance.
Component units (as defined by GASB) of all participating entities must report to the Website.

11. Recent Developments and Issues continued:
School Districts and Charter Schools must use the State Board of Education chart of accounts when reporting to Website.
Division of Finance has proposed a change to how some records are protected on the Website.
State Auditor is annually reporting local governments balance sheet data on the website. (Census bureau reporting and bench marking)
State Auditor is requiring a special field in file uploads to map/cross walk the entities’ chart of accounts to the auditor’s uniform chart of accounts.

12. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Transparency Website Grades
Year
Points
Grade
2016 88 B+
2015 86 B
2014 82 B-
2013
88.5
2012 87

13. Additional Projects overseen by the Board:
GRAMA request portal for state and local governments administered by Division of Archives.
Open Data portal administered by Department of Technology Services.

14. Any Questions?
Contact us:
John Reidhead
Darrell Swensen
John Draney
Brenda Lee