The Behavior Analyst Advisory Committee received operational updates from the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board about a planned migration to a new licensing system, a drive to digitize records and a near-finished review of unprofessional-conduct regulations.

David Fye, executive director, said the agency is working with the state Office of Information Technology Services and the vendor Accela to replace the current licensing system. “They have been meeting with us since January, and we are in the discovery phase where they are going through and making sure that they understand all of our current processes,” Fye said. He estimated the building, testing and launch process will take about a year to a year and a half.

Fye also described steps to reduce paper storage and to transfer archival records to the state archive. The agency’s document-retention and continuity-of-operations work — intended to reduce delays in case of catastrophe and to free staff time — will include off-site electronic storage and scanning plans, he said.

Unprofessional-conduct regulations: Fye said the board has compiled a side-by-side “bridal” (consolidated) table of current unprofessional-conduct language across all seven professions, with potential standardized wording. Board members have been discussing each item and will move toward public comment once the work is finished. “Once the board finishes that process, we'll be able to put this language out for public comment and review,” Fye said.

Why it matters: A modern licensing platform and fewer paper records are intended to improve customer service, reduce manual processing and better support audit and enforcement workflows. Standardized unprofessional-conduct language is intended to clarify expectations for both practitioners and the public.

Key details
- Vendor and platform: Accela; the BSRB is agency number 7 of ~10 statewide agencies pursuing this vendor solution.
- Timeline: Discovery began in January; Fye said full implementation is about one to 1.5 years away.
- Records: Staff are transferring older paper records to the state archive and planning electronic retention with off-site backup to support continuity-of-operations.
- Conduct rules: Staff produced a consolidated comparison table across all seven professions to support board decisions; the board will consider public comment after internal review.
- Out‑of‑town board meeting: The board’s annual all-day out-of-town meeting is scheduled for Sept. 29 in Manhattan, Kan.; it is open to the public.

Next steps: The BSRB will continue building the Accela instance, test workflows and report progress to advisory committees. The board will continue reviewing and refining unprofessional-conduct language before public comment and formal adoption.

Quotes from the meeting
“They have built they call them stories, but essentially walking through each step in the process to make sure they're not missing something that would need to be built into the system as a question,” David Fye said of the vendor’s discovery work.

“This system should do a lot of that for us,” Linda Heissman Powell, committee chair, said about benefits from electronic licensing and automation.

Ending
Committee members expressed support and asked staff to provide periodic demonstrations and timelines as the Accela implementation progresses. Fye said staff will continue to coordinate with OITS and provide updates as milestones are reached.