DFA and LFC unveil public capital outlay dashboard to track projects and balances

The Department of Finance and Administration and the Legislative Finance Committee demonstrated a new public capital outlay dashboard to the Senate Finance Committee on Jan. 27, saying the tool will make project and spending data easier to find and monitor.

"You can find it at caps.nm.gov," Wesley Billingsley, director of DFA’s Infrastructure Planning and Development Division, told the committee while walking members through the dashboard’s features. "It takes all of these capital outlay projects that are in our caps system...and puts it onto a dashboard that's easier to read, easier to navigate, and...more transparent."

Billingsley showed features that include a statewide map with district overlays, free-text project search, filters by appropriation ID, entity, county and earmark, and project profiles that display total project cost, appropriation amounts, unfunded amounts and quarterly reports dating to the start of an appropriation. He said the dashboard currently displays about $6.5 billion in unspent balances and that staff plan further improvements, including adding special appropriations data.

Kelly Carswell of LFC told senators the dashboard will help district legislative assistants and local governments manage projects without having to piece information together from multiple offices. Carswell said the system is designed to hold agencies and local entities accountable for timely quarterly reporting and to surface which projects have activity and which do not.

Why it matters: Committee members — many of whom raised concerns about many small, partially funded local projects — said the dashboard could help identify projects that are not progressing and support faster grant agreements, procurement and oversight. LFC and DFA staff said they will continue training DLAs and local officials on the tool and consider adding more data feeds in future iterations.

Next steps: DFA and LFC will provide committee staff with links and training materials and said they will evaluate adding special appropriations to the public dashboard.