THE MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE

The Joint Committee on

Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review

Report # 543

Management of Mississippi’s State-Owned Vehicles

Executive Summary

Introduction

Chapter 537, Laws of 2006, created a comprehensive vehicle management system for state agencies to be administered by the Department of Finance and Administration. This legislation amended several provisions of the CODE that addressed vehicle management by establishing stronger controls over the vehicle management process.

Of greatest significance was the legislation amending CODE Section 25-1-77 to establish a fleet management function within the Department of Finance and Administration and define its functions. This section created the Bureau of Purchasing, Travel, and Fleet Management for the purpose of:

…coordinating and promoting efficiency and economy in the purchase, lease, rental, acquisition, use, maintenance, and disposal of vehicles by state agencies….

The law excludes certain vehicles from the scope of the vehicle management system: seized and forfeited vehicles of the departments of Public Safety and Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks; vehicles used by the Department of Public Safety’s sworn officers in undercover operations; and vehicles of the state institutions of higher learning.

The PEER Committee sought to determine whether the Department of Finance and Administration’s Bureau of Fleet Management has implemented a system that complies with the requirements of the 2006 law and whether the vehicle management system could be improved to be more effective and efficient.

The Department of Finance and Administration’s Management of State Agencies’ Vehicles

The Bureau’s Collection of Information on State Agencies’ Vehicles

The information that the Bureau of Fleet Management requires agencies to maintain and/or submit often lacks the detail necessary for the bureau to make critical decisions about need for a vehicle, utilization, or justification of commuter status.

The Bureau of Fleet Management establishes guidelines for agencies regarding the maintenance and submission of information on state-owned vehicles and is responsible for collecting vehicle utilization and financial data. To carry out its legislative mandate, the bureau must collect data on the attributes of vehicles in the state fleet as well as information on the users of vehicles.

To determine compliance with the bureau’s requirements for collecting and maintaining documentation for justification and utilization of vehicles, PEER sampled records on 535 vehicles from forty-six state agencies based in the Jackson metropolitan area. PEER reviewed data for the period of January through June 2010. The following are PEER’s conclusions based on its sample of vehicle records regarding the bureau’s collection of vehicle-specific information.

• Evidence of the Need for a Vehicle--Within PEER’s sample of records for state-owned vehicles, vehicle authorization forms often lacked necessary detail regarding the requesting agency’s needs, thus impairing the bureau’s ability to determine whether the agency should be assigned a vehicle or allowed to procure one. Only 43% of vehicle justification forms in PEER’s sample included sufficient information describing the economy and efficiency of the desired vehicle.
• Documentation of Agency’s Permission to Use a Vehicle and Employee’s Responsibility--Within PEER’s sample of records for state-owned vehicles, use agreement forms were not always current or easily accessible, thus making it difficult for the bureau or a third party to determine whether vehicles are being used by persons who are authorized to drive them.
• Extent of Utilization of Motor Pool Vehicles--Motor pools provide agencies with vehicles that may be used by properly authorized employees to carry out legal responsibilities of the agency. Within PEER’s sample of records for state-owned vehicles, most motor pool vehicles’ daily trip logs lacked detail on the points of travel and total number of miles traveled. This information is essential for the bureau’s use in analyzing vehicle utilization.
  

  The bureau does not specify a standard daily trip log form or format for agencies’ drivers to use, instead allowing each agency to determine how to capture this data regarding its employees’ use of vehicles from motor pools. Only 22% of the vehicles in PEER’s sample had daily trip logs with fields to capture the three elements of information required by the bureau (i. e., total number of miles traveled, designation of the business location [to and from]), and the beginning and ending odometer readings). Also, the bureau does not require daily trip logs to capture information on the identity of a vehicle’s driver or the purpose of the trip. This information is needed for the bureau to confirm that only authorized drivers are using state-owned vehicles and to determine whether the vehicles are being used for the appropriate purposes.

• Allowing an Employee to Commute in a State Vehicle--Agencies must determine that there is a basis in fact for an employee to be assigned a state-owned vehicle that will be used for commuting. The bureau requires that the agency report this information on commuter authorization request forms.
  

  Within PEER’s sample, these forms often lacked the necessary detail to justify the need for allowing an employee to have a state-owned vehicle on a 24/7 basis; the forms often lacked clear, convincing information to assist the bureau in determining whether the benefits from making a permanent vehicle assignment were real and measurable. Twenty-five percent of the commuter vehicles in PEER’s sample did not have documentation describing the compelling benefit to the state for the use of that vehicle for commuting. When an agency’s employees do not report this information, it impairs the bureau’s ability to make informed decisions on whether continued use of these vehicles should be authorized.

  The bureau categorizes commuter vehicles into four classifications based on the duties of the employees using them: law enforcement, specialized equipment, virtual office, and 24/7 on-call vehicles. Drivers of commuter vehicles must submit logs that show how and when the vehicles are being used. PEER reviewed the logs for specialized equipment, virtual office, and 24/7 commuter vehicles and found multiple instances of drivers not completing all information fields on the logs. The bureau and respective agencies need this information to ensure that the vehicles are being efficiently used and to determine whether continued authorization should be permitted.

The Bureau’s Capability to Track Vehicle Locations

Beyond knowing to which agency a particular vehicle is assigned, the Bureau of Fleet Management does not have data with which to determine the location where that particular vehicle is assigned (i. e., to which duty station or motor pool the vehicle is assigned) without obtaining the information directly from the respective agency. Thus the bureau does not have the information it needs to manage allocation of state-owned vehicles within a geographic area based on agencies’ needs.

Large state agencies often assign non-commuter vehicles to duty stations throughout the state. Agencies manage their own assignment of vehicles to duty stations by whatever method they choose.

The bureau’s vehicle management software has a field with which to specify vehicle location, but the bureau has not established uniform location codes for use of all agencies statewide. Although location codes may be present in the database, the bureau is unable to sort data by location code for any type of state-level vehicle management purpose.

Utilization of the Bureau’s Vehicle Management Software

Protégé, the state’s vehicle management software, serves as a repository for vehicle information such as operating costs and driver identification. However, the system does not incorporate information on locations of travel, number of trips, or purpose of travel, which is the type of information necessary to manage the state’s fleet effectively.

Protégé maintains information on operating costs, vehicle assignment, and vehicle identification data. Protégé does not capture utilization data (e. g., how a vehicle is being used, trip purpose and destination, average miles per gallon). Agencies collect this information manually, but it is not available to the bureau for analyzing the traveling activities of persons using state vehicles and making decisions about the need for vehicles. Also, without this data, the bureau does not have complete information with which to make vehicle allocation or disposal decisions.

Management of Vehicles Owned by the State’s Institutions of Higher Learning

The Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning, exempted from the scope of the 2006 vehicle management legislation, collects information about the fleets of the individual institutions, but does not make procurement decisions or consider the appropriateness of vehicle procurements made by individual institutions.

The IHL Executive Office collects information about the individual institutions’ vehicle fleets and loads this information into its own data system, which is similar to the Bureau of Fleet Management’s Protégé system. Although the IHL Executive Office’s policies and best practices regarding vehicles are similar to those of the bureau for state agencies’ vehicles, management responsibility for vehicles owned by the institutions of higher learning rests with the executive officers of the individual institutions.

A system such as IHL’s that assigns vehicle procurement and disposal responsibilities to subordinate entities will not likely achieve the purposes of fleet management. The IHL Executive Office is limited to evaluation of management practices and does not serve as a final authority for vehicle acquisition, allocation, and use decisions.

Recommendations

• Because the current vehicle management system does not provide the capability to analyze state vehicle utilization information on miles driven, the Department of Finance and Administration should upgrade its current system to ensure that the Bureau of Fleet Management can:
  
  
  • analyze current usage of state owned vehicles to determine which vehicles are underutilized;
  • analyze current agency use of leased vehicles and private vehicle reimbursement for mileage.

  To this end, the department should consider the following:

  • Investigate obtaining an upgrade of the current Protégé system. PEER has learned that Protégé can accept additional modules that could enable the system to analyze vehicle utilization to determine the mileage being added to vehicles in the state fleet. The department should investigate the possibility of acquiring such upgrades that could either:
    
    
    • accept utilization information in the form of agency-submitted spreadsheets; or,
    • provide an interface within Protégé capable of transmitting utilization data to BFM; or,
    • rely on remotely transmitted information using global positioning systems (GPS) that transmit utilization information directly from state vehicles.
  • Assuming that the department’s staff does not believe that upgrading Protégé would be beneficial to the state, the department should develop a request for proposals for a fleet management system that would, at minimum, accomplish the following:
    
    
    • capture state vehicle utilization information by vehicle;
    • capture from the Statewide Automated Accounting System, or any successor system, mileage reimbursement payments made to state employees who travel on official business;
    • maintain a record of current operational costs and depreciation for all vehicles in the state fleet;
    • minimize the number of record transcriptions that must occur in preparing and transmitting utilization information; and,
    • provide a statewide location code system applied to all assets to provide the physical location associated with the vehicle’s base of operations, including a number signifying the agency location itself and a number for a sub-location if multiple locations exist for that agency.

    The system should bid with three options:

    • Option 1: A system utilizing GPS-transmitted information on each vehicle that will be received by DFA for analysis;
    • Option 2: A spreadsheet-driven system that will utilize periodically submitted spreadsheets containing vehicle utilization information; or,
    • Option 3: A fleet management software system with its own user interface capable of utilizing operational cost data and utilization data and generating reports on these data.

    Such a system should produce, at a minimum, the following reports:

    • vehicle utilization reports by agency;
    • vehicle breakeven analysis by vehicle type;
    • reports of all vehicles underutilized by state agencies; and,
    • a list of persons whose travel reimbursement exceeds the breakeven point for assignment of state vehicles.

    The department should require that the Bureau of Fleet Management conduct a longitudinal study showing the savings that improved fleet management has generated. The department should make the first of these reports three years after the implementation of any software upgrade and provide annual updates.

• Regardless of the system that the Department of Finance and Administration chooses to manage the process by which utilization information is submitted to the Bureau of Fleet Management, several improvements must be made to the protocols for filing information with the Bureau of Fleet Management and the substance of information provided to the bureau. The following addresses these recommended changes.
  
  
  1. Submission of utilization information in the event that the department chooses to select a data management option that relies on either the submission of spreadsheets or direct agency submission of information to Protégé--Assuming that the Department of Finance and Administration chooses to require submission of information by agencies rather than selecting a GPS-driven system, there must be improvement in both the protocols for submitting information and in the substance of information sent to the Bureau of Fleet Management.
     

     Regarding protocols for submitting information, the Bureau of Fleet Management should:

     • establish a uniform format for reporting;
     • establish a reporting period;
     • designate the person responsible for maintaining original files and intervals for how frequently they will be updated; and,
     • make the agency property officer responsible for making submissions to DFA.

     Regarding the substance of utilization information provided, the Bureau of Fleet Management should require that the electronic versions of logs should be prepared to include the following:

     Daily motor logs should include, at a minimum, the following information to be used in reviewing utilization of the vehicle:

     • beginning/ending odometer reading per trip;
     • total miles per day;
     • origin and destination per trip;
     • purpose per trip; and,
     • driver identification per trip.

     Daily commuter logs should require, at a minimum, the following information:

     • date and time of event;
     • description of event;
     • indication of “no responses” to ensure that if no responses are listed, it will not be interpreted as not being completed.
  2. Other records regarding permitted uses of vehicles and authorization for agency vehicles--Regardless of the system that the department may select for the bureau to analyze utilization vehicle usage information more effectively, the bureau should make several changes in other required records that agencies submit respecting their vehicles and their use.
     

     Commuter authorization forms should require, at a minimum, the following information to insure clarity of purpose:

     • projected business miles and justification for amount;
     • projected commuter miles and address;
     • discussion of why authorization provides a compelling benefit to the state based on the type of vehicle assignment received:
       
       
       • if a 24/7 responder, how the vehicle would be used to halt potential loss of life or significant property damage;
       • if virtual office, why the assumptions are made that the vehicle will spend 80% or more of its time outside of the physical office location;
       • if specialized equipment, what constitutes the need for driving with the equipment outside of work hours.

     This should exclude allowing only the referral to sections of the MISSISSIPPI CODE, job titles, or circular references to the compelling benefit (e. g., the compelling benefit stated as “because it is necessary to perform job duties.”).

     If there are occasions when the individual using the vehicle is also the most senior authority responsible for signing a commuter form for agency personnel, the board of directors or commissioners should instead sign the form to ensure that a second party has objectively reviewed this compelling benefit and granted permission of state use.

     Vehicle request forms should require, at a minimum, the following information to ensure clarity of purpose:

     • complete description of vehicle (make, model, year, type, options) as already required;
     • whether a vehicle is an addition or addition of replacement (per vehicle) and anticipated annual mileage of vehicles (both fields already required);
     • justify efficiency in terms of specific descriptive information on whether the vehicle is the most efficient vehicle for the job description based on a discussion of job duties to be performed;
     • justify economy in terms of specific descriptive information on whether the vehicle is the least expensive solution for achieving the job duties to be performed and a provision of documentation showing this was the case for all options and models offered;
     • other administrative fields as required on the existing form such as assignment, primary use, and agency name.

     Vehicle use agreements--Because daily motor logs currently do not require driver identification, currently there is no way to establish which employees used or were authorized to use a particular vehicle. The bureau should require:

     • that agencies keep a user agreement of all allowed drivers per vehicle; or,
     • contingent upon BFM adjusting policy to require legible driver identification in all daily motor logs and commuter logs, that each agency property officer (or division officer if multiple fleets) maintain a central repository of individual agreements for compliance audit and legal purposes to match back to a driver.

     Regarding these records, the department should move toward a system whereby these forms could be electronically submitted to the agency for use and storage.

  3. Establishment of specific responsibilities for agency property or fleet management officers--BFM should promulgate policies that prescribe the specific compliance responsibilities for property or fleet officers at agencies regarding state vehicles. The duties should include initial quality assurance of records (i. e., ensure that all forms per vehicle are completed when about to expire) and assurance that personnel have completed all required forms per field. Should there be multiple fleet managers per agency, it would be at the discretion of the agency property officer to delegate these tasks to or keep the role centralized; however, the end result should be to raise the standard of the reporting process and additionally make any spot audits or compliance checks performed by BFM less time-consuming.
  4. Establishment of vehicle tracking method--The bureau should require that all agencies under its jurisdiction provide it with information that will identify the physical location of each agency pool vehicle or other vehicle not assigned to a commuter. The bureau could allow agencies to establish a system based on county codes or some other uniform method of nomenclature, but the agencies should make available to the bureau a key that will enable them, the State Auditor, and any other external reviewer to know the agency duty station, lot, or other physical location where the vehicle can be found at all times when it is not in use.
• The Legislature should amend MISS. CODE ANN. Section 37-101-15 (1972) to require the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning to implement a fleet management system that insures that the board, and not the individual institutions, will have control over the decisions to acquire, assign, and dispose of universities’ vehicles. To this end, the Board of Trustees should have all necessary powers to prescribe all necessary forms, logs, and other reporting requirements and further should be required to procure vehicle management software that would ensure that it can monitor and manage the use, assignment, and disposal of all vehicles in the universities’ fleets.
  

  The PEER Committee should follow up on IHL’s progress in implementing this recommendation prior to the 2012 legislative session. If IHL has not implemented a vehicle management system that accomplishes the ends set out above, the Legislature should amend MISS. CODE ANN. Section 25-1-77 (1972) to place IHL vehicles under the authority of the Bureau of Fleet Management.

PEER Home Page         Full Text PDF (2,327K)