State pilot aims to link program inventories with budget data to give legislators deeper visibility

A subcommittee of the HBA 34 Data and Impact Commission on artificial intelligence and budgeting heard a pilot proposal to join agency program inventories with the state's budgeting system, presenters told the committee.

Chief Data Officer Adam Carver opened the meeting and asked project staff to explain how the pilot would work. Ms. Gunther, who led the briefing, said the one-page example the team will show to interim budget committees over the next two days maps program inventory descriptions (what each functional area does, statutory requirements and populations served) to the budgeting system's recent-year expenditures and budgeted positions. "What this project is aiming to do is combine that information... so typically when we're looking at the budget we're looking at the division or program level — we're gonna go one level deeper," she said.

The nut of the proposal is transparency: by aligning program inventories with the budget, legislators and staff would be able to identify which divisions and subfunctions receive House Bill 2 funding, proprietary fund support or statutory appropriations, and how many positions and dollars are associated with each functional area.

Jason Harlow of the Governor's Budget Office told the committee the offices working on the pilot have already reconciled a large share of program-to-budget "matches" and described progress as iterative across the current and next biennium. "So much progress has been made," Harlow said, adding that the team was "looking forward to continuing to work there."

Committee members pressed staff on where outcome or effectiveness information would appear. One member asked whether binary progress indicators ("did it happen?") or measures of effectiveness would be recorded on the program inventory page or an EPC field; staff suggested adding a broadly framed question about how agencies know a program is effective and seeking agency input on what constitutes usefulness in different program types.

Speakers emphasized trade-offs. Several members cautioned that requiring agencies to publish outcome measures can feel exposing for staff that perform many operational tasks on small budgets. "There's kind of a vulnerability about doing that with the legislature," one member said, noting agencies may be reluctant to set measures that could be judged without context. Others urged that for federally regulated programs the feds already define appropriate outcome measures.

The committee discussed examples from other states (members cited Nevada, North Carolina, Utah and Louisiana) as potential models to study, but did not recommend a single template. Staff flagged technical dependencies: the accounting system must be configured to feed the budgeting system so the mapping can work, and some improvements may need to wait until the next biennium budget cycle.

No motion or formal action was taken. Staff said the interim budget committees will receive the one-page examples over the next two days and invited feedback; subcommittee members asked staff to return with suggestions about which types of administrative programs might be exempted from outcome reporting.

What happens next: the pilot materials will be presented to interim budget committees for feedback, and the project teams (Office of Budget and Program Planning, legislative fiscal staff and agency partners) will reconvene to refine the approach before the next session. No votes were recorded in the subcommittee meeting.