NRC is Seeking Options for Shared Service Center Support

A recent request for information issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission intends to elicit responses from public and private shared service providers regarding the NRC's options for financial and administrative systems and hosting support outsourcing.

The NRC currently uses a Federal shared service provider (SSP) as the information technology (IT) host and provider of the NRC's core financial system, the Federal Financial System (FFS). This SSP has over 30 years experience successfully servicing administrative systems for over 150 Federal government agencies. FFS is the centerpiece of the NRC financial systems architecture. FFS is a mainframe-based legacy system that the NRC implemented in October 1992 to perform the core financial function for the NRC. Although implemented by the NRC in 1992, FFS was developed more than 20 years ago and is now nearing the end of its extended life cycle. In addition to FFS, the same Federal SSP currently hosts the NRC payroll and human resources system and the NRC e-Travel System. Moreover, the supporting infrastructure including communications links, interfaces, continuity planning, and security are well-established and shared by these applications.

The Federal SSP notified all customer agencies in a March 30, 2006, letter, that the corporate owner of FFS, CGI-AMS, has advised the SSP that FFS is no longer compliant with Federal standards for financial management systems and that they have discontinued any upgrades or enhancements to this system. Therefore, the SSP further advised that they will no longer provide services on FFS effective with the beginning of FY 2011, starting on October 1, 2010. As a result, the NRC must replace its legacy core financial system, FFS, with a modern solution. The NRC is planning to target an implementation date of October 1, 2009. Thus, the NRC is conducting market research to survey the availability of capable hosts, from the commercial and public sectors, of financial systems applications and the specific core financial applications they offer. We are also researching the capability of these same hosts to host Federal payroll, time and labor (T&L), human resources, eTravel, and acquisition/ procurement systems.