It has been argued that the answer to public and political demands for a more responsive educational system lies in the practice of accountability. The future implementation of program budgeting may offer an attractive vehicle for accountability. Currently, many California school districts use the California Educational Information System (CEIS) as a primary vehicle for information storage, processing, and retrieval. Although adequate for present needs, CEIS is ill-suited to effective support of accountability and program budgeting. The legislature should create an advisory commission on information systems to define the structure and services of a CEIS II, a statewide information system designed to support accountability and program budgeting. A CEIS II would require system definition to determine information needs, transitional mechanisms, legislative and economic frameworks, security and privacy issues, and a functional system design to translate needs into specifications for subsequent programing and testing. (Author)