Oklahoma stimulus site revamp will cost $305,000
Earlier this week, I wrote about new rankings of state stimulus Web sites by the Washington-based group Good Jobs First. The group took Oklahoma’s site to task, giving it just 18 points out of 100:
Oklahoma’s Recovery Act Web site is very sparse,” the report states. “The state hasn’t posted a list of its spending for specific (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) program areas and completely lacks information about individual projects. Many of the program information links contain outdated information or are dead.”
The good news is that state officials have promised to unveil a new site next month, one with enhanced search capabilities, vendor information and county details of stimulus spending . What I didn’t know Tuesday was that officials at the Office of State Finance had already signed a contract with software company Oracle Corp. for the revamp of the state’s stimulus Web site:
The Oracle software enables the Office of State Finance to effectively and efficiently manage and collect data related to awards, sub-awards and vendor payments from more than 25 state agencies and higher education institutions that have received Federal funding under ARRA and then automatically submit the data in reports mandated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the FederalReporting.gov Web site. The Oracle solution enables the department to better cleanse, combine and report the data, improving data accuracy.
The new software will cost the state $231,836, which includes annual license fees of $41,806, according the Office of State Finance. The state spent another $74,950 in consulting fees with Oracle to build the Web site and train local employees on the new software.
Michael Clingman, director of the Office of State Finance, said his agency also hopes to use the software for the state’s Open Books Web site and for internal agency use:
The Oracle contract encompasses not only ARRA, but pulls together data for our Open Books project and other reports the state makes to the federal government,” Clingman said in a statement. “In addition, Oracle software licenses will be used for annual financial reports by the state.”
In an interview in December, Clingman said OSF looked at free or open-source options for updates to the state stimulus Web site. In the end, the agency determined it would take too long to implement a new system from scratch, he said.
The state uses an Oracle product, PeopleSoft, for its human resources system, so it already had an existing business relationship with the company. (Oracle purchased PeopleSoft in 2005.) For more details on the Business Intelligence software that the state bought, check out this product sheet from Oracle.
–Paul
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[...] stimulus site unveiled a new section that tracks spending in the state. The revamp has been in the works for several months. It’s accessible by going to the “Recovery Spending” link in [...]