The Kansas Taxpayer Transparency Program was included in legislation passed by the 2007 Legislature and signed by Governor Sebelius. This legislation (Section 163 of House Bill 2368) requires the establishment of a single searchable website, accessible at no cost to the public, containing annual revenue, expenditure and other data from the statewide accounting and payroll systems.
The goal of this legislation is to make financial activity of state government more transparent and readily accessible to the public, thus increasing accountability in state spending. The legislation gives website ownership and oversight responsibilities to the Secretary of Administration and creates the 15 member Public Finance Transparency Board as an advisory to the Secretary for website implementation and content. The website will be online starting Friday, February 29, 2008. The website name is KanView and will be found at: http://www.kansas.gov/kanview.
KanView Data
Generally, the source of KanView data is the Statewide Accounting and Reporting System (STARS). Under provisions of the Taxpayer Transparency Program, KanView will initially contain STARS historical revenue and expenditure general ledger data for FY 2006 and FY 2007. Prospectively the legislation requires data for 10 fiscal years. This data will be searchable with the capability to “drill down” to the voucher document level. Document detail level data elements displayed on KanView include Fund, Budget Unit, Program Cost Account, Sub-Object Code, Voucher, Process Date, Amount, and Vendor Name.
Data Confidentiality
The enabling legislation states that nothing permits or requires the disclosure of information within KanView which is considered confidential by federal or state law. Note that STARS contains no specific capability to identify and isolate confidential transactions. However every effort has been made protect legally confidential vendor information using a two-tiered approach to develop confidentiality methodology:
1) A&R developed blanket criteria to isolate known areas of non-disclosure. One example is expenditure object codes potentially including Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) transactions.
2) Agencies were surveyed in order to identify and further isolate agency specific confidentiality requirements under state and federal law. All information received by agencies has been incorporated into the confidentiality methodology developed for KanView.
Additionally, even though the STARS vendor number (FEINs, SSNs, etc.) is a key data element in STARS, note that these identification numbers are stripped from the STARS data files before the files are used within KanView. Thus KanView contains no STARS Vendor Table numbers.
KanView Feedback
- KanView includes a user feedback web page which allows users to email their questions or comments to the State regarding the KanView website, the data content, or technical KanView issues.
- All KanView user feedback emails are routed to
ARMAIL@da.ks.gov and will be monitored by the Division of Accounts and Reports (A&R).
- For agency-specific questions/comments, the email request will be forwarded from
ARMAIL@da.ks.gov to the appropriate agency. The agency’s primary contact for communication will be used to forward agency specific questions/comments. However, if your agency prefers to have these requests routed to another individual within your agency, please email the agency contact information (include agency number and name, and the contact’s name, telephone number & email address) to ARMAIL@da.ks.gov.
- The KanView user will be “cc’d” on all email requests that are forwarded from ARMAIL@da.ks.gov to agencies.
- Agencies should respond directly to the KanView user and also “cc” ARMAIL@da.ks.gov on the reply to the KanView user.
