Last summer, Eric shared about our work moving towards a combined and improved platform for electronic reporting and project management. As a part of that, the County Annual Reporting System (CARS) transitioned last fall and was used for the first time on the December 2023 required forms. So let's talk about how it went and where we are going from here.
For those who need a refresher, why did we decide to move to a new system?
The change was made for two major reasons. First, the original CARS program was written in-house by our IT staff using software that had become dated over time and eventually, unsupported. Secondly, the software and its related interfaces had become a security risk as patches were no longer available.
How has the first year gone and what have we learned?
We have completed an entire annual cycle of required reporting using the new software and retooled forms. As, expected, some issues were identified during implementation but, for the most part, the transition was successful and counties did a good job navigating the change.
Overall, I think we landed on the positive side of the balance sheet. For users it is simply different, some things were improved and a few areas of custom functionality were lost. On the admin side, our ability to manage county users was greatly improved and increased our capability to change and update forms and the system functionality. Two specific examples were implementing electronic signatures and two linked-over-time reports (ACP-ACR and CAPP Program-CAPP Report).
As with any roll out, it is never perfect from the start. Between December and April, we worked closely with the end users to understand their experience, document bugs and functionality issues and brainstorm potential improvements. Where we could, some of these issues were addressed and fixed in real time as they were identified.
I would be remiss if I did not thank our Software Engineer, James Rea, for putting up with me and responding quickly and consistently as issues arose.
What can you expect going forward?
We are committed to continuous improvement and CARS is no exception. Users can expect to see some changes and improvements to the forms and system functionality with the next round of annual reporting. Many of the changes will likely be unnoticeable: minor tweaks to forms so they look and flow better. We will also continue to improve the print versions of the forms.
Some changes you can expect to see include:
- Two new forms will debut in April: The first one to will transition the road log submittal certification from paper to CARS; the second will be an actuals report for revenues and expenditures that is almost a carbon-copy of the Budget Summary.
- Improved user-friendliness in the electronic signature process: We are working with AdobeSign on how to provide status information once a signature request has been sent out by the County Engineer.
- CAPP forms have been decoupled and are no longer a linked-over-time set. This is a big, and expected to be popular, change and users will only be asked for program level information and not road segment information going forward in the December reporting. Instead, details of actual accomplishments will be captured in April's CAPP Accomplishments Report.
- STILL IN PROGRESS: Reducing the redundant work in ACP and CAPP Accomplishment Reports. We were assured early on by SmartSimple that the functionality to upload county information from a spreadsheet to the reports was available; however, implementing it has proven to be elusive. It will substantially reduce keystrokes for these reports and remains a top issue that we are working hard to resolve.
- STILL IN PROGRESS: Updated training videos for users. We plan to update the resources for December forms because they were produced before the user screen was finalized.
To our CARS users: thank you. We greatly appreciate your critiques, suggestions and questions during this last year and your prompt reporting of them. We welcome and encourage all of your feedback as we continue to improve.
