In this sentence, "as" means "the same as" or "similar to" or "like." If something is "not as we would like it to be," then it is different from the way we would like it to be. It is not the same way we would like it to be. Some other examples: "The room was not as described." (This means that the room was not similar to the way it was described. If I told you that the room had three windows, but you then discovered that it really only had one window, you could say, "The room was not as described" or "The room was not as you described it to me.") "Our trip went as planned." (This means that you made plans for your trip, and then you carried out your plans successfully. Nothing was different from what you had planned.) "The shirt looked nice in the pictures online, but when I got it in the mail, it was not as pictured." (This means that the shirt was not the same in real life as it was in the photos that I saw online.)

In this sentence, "as" is a conjunction. You could also say "something is not how we would like it to be" or "something is not the way we would like it to be. " You can find more uses and examples of "as" here: http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/as

Hi Lee. In this case, "as" means "the same as." We use as with the same to talk about identical things: Example: Your jacket is the same colour as mine.