Staff report: Kentucky’s Archibus inventory lacks data to calculate property utilization

Legislative staff told the Legislative Oversight and Investigation Committee that Kentucky’s current real‑property database, Archibus, records the state’s owned and leased assets but does not capture the data needed to calculate utilization rates for individual properties.

Chris Hall, an analyst for the committee, said staff compared Archibus to a trimmed version of the federal real property profile and concluded Archibus documents 10 of the 28 comparable data elements the committee used for benchmarking—roughly 36 percent. Hall said the missing elements are primarily utilization and performance measures such as badge‑in logs, head counts, functional use, workstation deployment and condition or deferred‑maintenance figures.

“Archibus captures what the state owns and where it’s located, but neither statute nor regulation require the collection of utilization, financial or facility condition data that would allow the department to determine whether a building is deteriorating, oversized, or appropriate for selling or disposal,” Hall said.

The staff memorandum described several definitions of utilization—space, functional and workstation use—and stressed that unlike occupation (the share of square footage assigned to an agency), utilization requires information about how space is actually used over time. To produce a statewide count of underutilized or unused properties, Hall said, the Commonwealth would need systematic collection of those inputs or a legislative definition of what “comprehensive” means for the database.

Barbie Dickens, general counsel for the Finance and Administration Cabinet, told the committee the cabinet appreciates the report but cautioned the federal standard used for comparison does not automatically apply to Kentucky. Dickens said the division of real properties could support additional data collection but warned it would require significant resources—either a substantial upgrade to Archibus or a request for proposals to replace it, and additional staff to maintain new data elements.

Committee members pressed for clarification about current practice and remedies. Natalie Bronner of the Division of Real Properties said agencies supply some of the missing information on an ad hoc basis and the cabinet uses internal processes such as Archibus runs and space‑request forms to identify available space, but there is no consistent, statewide process for declaring a building surplus or systematically compiling utilization metrics.

The committee unanimously approved the staff research memorandum accepting the findings. Chair moved that staff and the cabinet should return with proposals that specify which data elements a revised statutory definition of “comprehensive” should require and estimates of the required resources. The committee did not adopt a specific statutory change at the meeting; it agreed to continue the discussion at a later date.

The staff report and the cabinet’s responses are expected to inform whether the General Assembly will define Archibus’s scope in statute or fund system and personnel upgrades to support active portfolio management.