The Department of Banking and Finance has scheduled a public workshop on 8/3/00 from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. in Conference Room A Building 3 at the Agency for Health Care Administration which is located in the Fort Knox Office Center at 2727 Mahan Drive. The workshop will focus on issues relative to the impact of activity and unit cost tracking and reporting on the statewide accounting system (FLAIR).

Effective July 1, 2000, the State of Florida revised its budgeting process and budget structure outlined in Section 216, Florida Statutes (F.S.). The new planning and budgeting process utilizes the concepts of program, service and activities. These terms may be defined as follows:

Program - A set of services undertaken in accordance with a plan of action to realize identifiable goals based on legislative authorization.
Service - A sequence of activities in a logical combination representing the lowest level to which funds are specifically appropriated in the appropriations act.
Activity - A set of transactions within a service that translates inputs into one or more outputs using resources in response to a business requirement.

State agencies are now required to track and report the total costs and unit costs for each agency activity.

State agencies have implemented a number of different approaches using the statewide accounting system in order to comply with the tracking and reporting requirements for the new planning and budgeting system. The approaches include but are not limited to: (1) restructuring the FLAIR organization code; (2) use of the FLAIR other cost accumulators (OCA) data element; (3) use of the FLAIR project number; (4) use of the six-digit agency-use extension of the state standard program code; (5) development of off-line (non FLAIR) spreadsheet and database applications and (6) various combinations of approaches 1-5.

On 8/3/00 the Department of Banking and Finance staff will facilitate a fact-finding workshop discussion on the impact of activity and unit cost tracking and reporting on the statewide accounting system. We request representatives from each state agency attend and be prepared to discuss the approach that their organization has implemented (or plans to implement) to support the activity and unit cost tracking requirements. We would also like to hear suggestions from the workshop attendees regarding the possible development of FLAIR enhancements to support the activity and unit cost tracking requirements and the possible development of some best practice guidelines as to how to effectively utilize FLAIR to support the activity and unit cost tracking requirements. Finally, we would like to discuss the impact that the activity and unit cost tracking requirements will have on the number of FLAIR transactions and FLAIR master file records.

1. Welcome and introductions.

2. Discussion of how state agencies plan on using FLAIR to support activity and unit cost tracking and reporting.

3. Discussion on whether best practice guidelines should be developed as to how state agencies should utilize FLAIR to support activity and unit cost tracking and reporting.

4. Discussion of possible enhancements to FLAIR to better accommodate activity and unit cost tracking and reporting.

5. Discussion on the impact of activity and unit cost tracking and reporting on the number of FLAIR transactions and master file records.

6. Other items of interest.

7. Recap and follow-up actions.

8. Conclusion.

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