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Friday, September 02, 2005

Ind. Gov't. - Kentucky can't track contract work

The Louisville Courier Journal has a story today headlined: "Audit: State can't track contract work - Changes will help, Finance Cabinet says." Some quotes:

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- The state cannot determine how many workers it has under contract or the time they put in, according to a report issued yesterday by the state auditor's office.

"A lack of information makes it impossible to determine whether hiring additional state employees or contracting for services is the most cost-effective way to fulfill state services," Auditor Crit Luallen said in a statement accompanying the report.

"Outsourcing state work has often been presented as a way to save the state money," Luallen wrote. "While that may be the situation, the current method of contracting for workers does not allow the state to conduct a case-by-case cost-benefit analysis to be sure." * * *

The report said Kentucky spent more than $655 million on 2,633 contracts for services in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2004. The report said the numbers had to be estimated because some contracts were improperly classified and because many service contracts are bundled with commodity contracts.

The state also lacks a clear process for determining whether service contract workers should be classified as employees, the audit concluded.

The audit recommended that state agencies use designations that will allow tracking the number of contract employees.

Those figures should then be compared to the cost of completing a service with state employees to determine the most cost-effective alternative, the report concluded.

What about Indiana? A list of "State of Indiana Active and Approved Contracts as of 9/2/05" is available here, at the Department of Administration site. You are given the option to view or download an HTML or Excel version. Be forewarned that these files are very large, the HTML version is nearly 8 MG. This is important information, but with very little effort, the State could make the HTML table sortable and searchable, which would make it useful information. Of course, that would be just the start.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 2, 2005 11:09 AM
Posted to Indiana Government