CPA

Consolidating a Large, Diverse Data Environment

“I can’t trust the data in the data warehouse … There are too many universes— which one should I use? … How do I find what I’m looking for? … I want to be able to slice and dice my data.”

These are just a few of the comments from a survey of users conducted by Daman for the Office of the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (CPA). A key role of the CPA is to provide the public and other state institutions with data about where state revenues come from and how this money is spent. However, the Office was facing limitations in its ability to integrate, manage and provide easy access to this data for the public, as well as for their own employees and other state agencies.

Daman was asked to provide recommendations for ways to consolidate more data, remove existing gaps in data, improve access and enhance service delivery. The task wasn’t simple. The CPA has one of the largest and most complex data environments in the state government, developing and managing contracts for more than 200 state agencies and about 1,600 local governments. A number of smaller agencies use CPA systems for managing their finances. State agencies also provide data to CPA to support the creation of the consolidated Annual Financial Report, and this data often needs to be adjusted several times to ensure that all financial numbers are accurate, consistent and complete.

Daman focused on three key areas: fiscal management; unclaimed property such as forgotten bank accounts; and enforcement to manage and track delinquent taxpayer accounts for collection. Over the years, each area has developed its own, standalone reporting applications with different data preparation and delivery components to meet specific, tactical objectives. Although the CPA had developed a business intelligence / data warehouse (BI/DW) platform and supported a number of integration initiatives, progress was limited due to architecture, resource and budgetary limitations.

As a result, users were reporting missing data, inaccessible data or data not in the right format. Some state agencies noted discrepancies in their data and the numbers published in the CPA’s Annual Financial Report. Self-service was limited to canned reports without the ability to drill down to more detailed data or generate ad hoc reports. Data sharing between CPA and the other agencies was a manual, time-consuming process. In some cases, users felt it was faster and easier to bypass existing data warehouses and go directly to source systems.