“Louisiana–Vision 2020” serves as a benchmark for improving highway pavements over a 20-year period. Cost-effective pavement preservation is emphasized in current Louisiana state law and federal law. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD) and the FHWA strategic plans also emphasize cost-effective pavement preservation. In an effort to improve the pavement management system (PMS), the Louisiana Transportation Research Center initiated a two-phase research study to evaluate the overall performance and effectiveness of the system. This paper focuses on the Phase I study and addresses the state-of-the-art practice of LADOTD's PMS and the results of a departmental survey to assess the needs of the various districts. The use of various location reference systems by different units in the department makes linking to different database sets difficult. Although many of the districts’ engineers have no concerns about all the referencing systems, most would prefer to have a unified reference location system. All the districts have access to the PMS data and most of them use it; however, the degree of use varies from one district to another. This paper also discusses the types of PMS output and reports, the degree to which the outputs are analyzed, the accuracy of the information currently available, and the degree to which the current PMS data track and differentiate between different preservation actions.