Treasury's Gregg to retire after 41 years in federal financial management

A long-time stalwart in the federal financial community decided to call it a career after 41 years in government.

The Treasury Department announced May 27 that Fiscal Assistant Secretary Richard Gregg is retiring at the end of June. Treasury said Dave Lebryk, currently the commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, will take over for Gregg, and Sheryl Morrow, currently deputy assistant secretary for Fiscal Operations and Policy at Treasury, will succeed Lebryk as commissioner. The changes will be official as of June 30.

During his career, Gregg worked under 16 different Treasury secretaries and served for 10 years as the commissioner of the Bureau of the Public Debt.

Most recently, Gregg oversaw efforts to move Treasury into the electronic world. He led initiative for Treasury to stop issuing paper checks in 2013.

Gregg also was a big proponent of shared services for financial management. He played a key role in reinvigorating the program, which recently named new federal providers.

Over the course of the last few years, Lebryk has worked closely with Gregg on many priorities.

Lebryk has been with Treasury for more than 25 years, serving in several senior leadership positions, including the deputy assistant secretary for Fiscal Operations and Policy, and deputy director and acting Director of the Mint.

Morrow, who has more than 34 years with Treasury, will continue to unify the government's fiscal and debt operations under one central vision and leadership under the recently merged Fiscal Service. During her career, she held numerous positions assistant commissioner for payment management and chief disbursing officer at the Financial Management Service.

- Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Lessons from 25 years at the Treasury Department

David A. Lebryk has held numerous positions at the Department of the Treasury since 1989. In 2012, he was named the first commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service when the Financial Management Service and the Bureau of the Public Debt were consolidated. Lebryk spoke about his experiences at the Treasury with Tom Fox, a guest writer for On Leadership and vice president for leadership and innovation at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Fox also heads up their Center for Government Leadership.

- Tom Fox, WashingtonPost.com
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Treasury jobs relocation on hold

The Treasury Department won’t start relocating hundreds of federal employees from Maryland to West Virginia until the end of 2019, according to news releases.

Treasury has put plans on hold to move 450 Financial Management Service employees based in Hyattsville, Md., to Parkersburg, W.Va., giving workers a six-year reprieve. Treasury sought to move the jobs in late 2013 as part of an effort to consolidate the department’s Financial Management Service and the Bureau of Public Debt into the Fiscal Service. Employees initially had until January 2015 to relocate or separate from the government.

The department this week announced the relocation won’t begin until Dec. 31, 2019. Affected jobs include those in accounting, information technology and some management and related support positions.

Maryland’s congressional delegation and the National Treasury Employees Union fought the plan to move employees to another state and negotiated for the delay. 

-Kellie Lunney, GovExec.com
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Treasury's FMS proving shared services works

The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service will have no trouble moving commodity technology to a shared service provider as required by the Office of Management and Budget.


FMS completed its transition to the Bureau of Public Debt for network operations and IT infrastructure support about 18 months ago under its Fiscal IT program. And that was just the latest technology service to be brought under the control of another organization.

"Both BPD and FMS work for the fiscal assistant secretary. In the conversation with him, he asked the question would it be ‘profitable'--save us time, money and energy--to look at combining the two bureau's IT infrastructure?" said John Kopec, the FMS chief information officer. "Both organizations have pretty strong CIO organizations. The BPD organization has a lot of scale in providing shared service infrastructure. Some of our applications prior to consolidation already resided at BPD."


Kopec said after looking at the potential savings and efficiency gains, the decision to move forward was pretty easy.

FMS, meanwhile, provides the oversight and governance, such as project management, capital planning and investment control and security, back to BPD.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Treasury Consolidation Would Merge Debt Division.

The White House on Monday said it wanted to consolidate the Bureau of Public Debt and the Financial Management Service within the Fiscal Service, another Treasury division. They say it will “streamline and modernize operations.”


“The consolidation also strengthens Treasury’s leadership of Federal financial management issues, reduces costs, and enhances efficiencies by further modernizing Federal financial management processes,” the White House said. It’s unclear how much money it will actually save.

-Damian Palleta, WSJ.com
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Today's GAO Publications

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the following reports and correspondence:

Financial Audit: Bureau of the Public Debt's Fiscal Years 2008 and 2007 Schedules of Federal Debt.
GAO-09-44, November 7.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-09-44
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d0944high.pdf

The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook: September 2008 Update.
GAO-09-94R, November 6.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-09-94R

Agencies choose vendors for financial systems

Agencies are increasingly choosing contractors as shared service providers for their modernized financial management systems over federal agencies that provide the same services. The first three large agencies to move to a shared service provider under the Financial Management Line of Business have selected contractors.

In the latest example, the Labor Department awarded a $50.4 million contract to Global Computer Enterprises on June 26 to develop and host a core financial management system to replace its mainframe accounting system The vendor will implement Oracle Federal Financial software for the department.

Agencies must use a public or private shared-services provider when they upgrade their financial management systems under the Office of Management and Budget’s Financial Management Line of Business consolidation initiative.

Meanwhile, two other agencies have chosen contractors to upgrade their financial systems over the federal agencies that act as shared service providers. The Environmental Protection Agency upheld its choice of CGI Federal in April to host its financial management software, after IBM protested the original award in February 2007. The Agriculture Department selected Accenture in September to modernize its financial systems.

The four agencies that provide financial management shared services are the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt, the Interior Department’s National Business Center, the Transportation Department and the General Services Administration.

Labor said it followed OMB's guidance for a competitive framework for the financial management effort and migration planning from GSA’s Financial Systems Integration Office.

-Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

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Today's GAO Publication

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the following report:

Financial Audit: Bureau of the Public Debt's Fiscal Years 2007 and 2006 Schedules of Federal Debt.
GAO-08-168, November 7
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-168
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08168high.pdf

FSIO Releases FMLOB Federal SSP Menu of Services v2

The Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are pleased to announce the release of version 2 of the Menu of Services provided by each Federal Shared Service Provider (SSP).

The Menu of Services is a compilation for each Federal SSP of their Financial Management Technology Hosting and Administration, Application Management Services, System Implementation Services, and Business Process services offered by the four (4) Federal SSPs. Section 5.1 is an introduction to the Menu of Services which provides an explanation for the Menu of Services spreadsheets found in Section 5.2. The Menu of Services can be found as a part of the Migration Planning Guidance by going to the “Quick Menu” column under the sub-list “FMLoB” and clicking on “FMLoB Documents”.

The Menu of Services replaces all parts of section 5.2 of the Migration Planning Guidance Document.

GSA to seek commercial financial management providers

The General Services Administration will release a request for proposals in June for commercial shared-service providers to supply financial management, according to Danny Harris, the Education Department’s deputy chief financial officer.

GSA’s Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) will select a small number of vendors from which agencies can choose to provide services under the Financial Management Line of Business consolidation initiative.

The commercial providers will join four agencies that are delivering financial management shared services: the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt, the Interior Department’s National Business Center, the Transportation Department and GSA.

The Office of Management and Budget has directed that agencies migrate their core financial services to providers when they upgrade their financial management systems.

Large agencies have been hesitant to outsource their complex systems and processes. After one large agency makes the move with minimum risk, others will follow, Harris said March 13 at the annual Federal Financial Management Conference sponsored by FSIO.

“The initiative is making progress, but I don’t think we’ll get the speed we need until a large agency validates the value proposition,” Harris said. He is also team leader of the CFO Council’s Financial Systems Oversight Team.

The Environmental Protection Agency last month awarded CGI Federal of Fairfax, Va., an $84 million contract as its shared-services provider for the agency’s Financial System Modernization Project. The EPA’s 10-year award is the first for a large system procurement conducted by a major agency under the line of business.

-Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

Research service suggests test runs for financial system consolidation

The Bush administration's plan to consolidate agency financial management systems into shared service centers might enjoy a greater chance of success if first tested using pilot projects, the Congressional Research Service recommended in a recent report.

The report, written by CRS analyst Garrett L. Hatch, stated that the debate over financial management streamlining focuses on when, not if, the consolidation should take place. As part of the so-called lines of business effort, the Office of Management and Budget is requiring agencies to move to one of several centralized financial systems run by the government and the private sector, once their existing systems need upgrades. But critics argue that these transitions should not happen until risks are adequately addressed, the report stated.

Hatch, who works in the Government Organization and Management section of the CRS' Government and Finance division, suggested that agencies address this by undertaking pilot projects before making transitions to shared service providers. This would allow officials to analyze and discuss the results of a potential move in a controlled environment.

But Karen Evans, OMB administrator of e-government and information technology, said the problem with pilot projects in government is that they "never go away."

All agencies are scheduled to move to shared financial management service providers by 2015, and OMB officials have said consolidating financial management and human resources systems will save $5 billion over 10 years.

Despite the concerns cited by Hatch that given the scope and complexity of financial management systems, the project is moving forward too quickly, the administration has not shown signs of slowing the drive toward consolidation.

The CRS report stated surveys have shown that agency officials' greatest fears are investing millions of dollars into moving to a shared service provider, only to have the provider fail to furnish the promised services. In several cases, OMB-designated shared service providers have failed to comply with financial regulations, the report stated.

A lack of regulations governing the agency-run centers have caused some to doubt that any large agency will successfully allow another shop to run its financial management systems. Several smaller agencies have moved to shared service providers. The available agency-run centers are the Bureau of Public Debt, the Interior Department's National Business Center, the Transportation Department and the General Services Administration.

In November, the Office of Personnel Management's much touted effort to move its back-end financial management operations to the Bureau of Public Debt's Administrative Resource Center collapsed. OPM officials have said they will conduct a public-private competition in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 to determine who will host their financial systems.

The CRS report also suggested that plans to develop performance metrics for financial management, standardize business processes across agencies and establish a governmentwide accounting code could provide the earliest opportunity to realize the benefits of improved agency financial management.

OMB has sent signals that may indicate it is backing away from the concept of consolidating agencies' IT systems around shared centers.

The agency is pursuing the adoption of uniform governmentwide standards rather than shared centers in three of the newest areas in which it is hoping for streamlining: budget formulation and evaluation systems, geospatial information systems and IT infrastructure.

-Daniel Pulliam, GovExec.com

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Strategic retreat - OPM cancels contract after requirements test fails

The agreement between the Office of Personnel Management and the Bureau of Public Debt’s Administrative Resource Center to cancel their relationship under the financial-management Line of Business initiative is not a story of another failed government contract.

Just the opposite. It could prove to be a breakthrough in federal project management and a valuable lesson for other agencies.

OPM determined that ARC could not fully meet its requirements and decided to recompete the contract instead of spending millions of dollars to force the proverbial square peg into a round hole.

“Both organizations came to the understanding that, with the Bureau of Public Debt’s configuration of Oracle, it would be better for us to look at an alternative source,” said OPM chief financial officer Clarence Crawford. “This was just part of our due diligence. We saw issues, we talked to them and looked at alternatives.”

Developing an RFP

OPM will now hold a competition between other federal shared-services providers and the private sector, Crawford said. The agency is working with the Office of Management and Budget to develop a request for proposals. Crawford would not give a timetable for releasing the RFP.

OPM in August 2005 became the first large agency to sign with a shared-services provider. In the 14 months since they signed a contract, OPM has spent about $400,000 developing the requirements and conducting pilots with ARC, Crawford said.

OMB officials and others applauded the decision not to move forward. And some observers say it is a validation of OMB’s insistence that agencies fully compete financial-management services instead of just looking at the public-sector providers’ skills and choosing one.

An industry source said the Housing and Urban Development Department wanted to move to the Federal Aviation Administration for financial management, but OMB forced a competition. HUD issued an RFP Oct. 31 to integrate its accounting and financial-management functions by moving core legacy systems to Oracle’s PeopleSoft suite of financial-management applications. Proposals are due Jan. 8.

Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and IT, said this is an example of good IT management.

Other agencies—the Labor Department, for instance—have gone down a similar path where their requirements were clearer, Evans said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is expected to make an award before Dec. 31, has been evaluating proposals since March to ensure it has its requirements right.

“As the model matures, we will see better and better procurements,” Evans said. OPM officials still were defining their requirements after making the decision to hire ARC.

And it was during their requirements phase that both agencies realized there might be a problem, said Michelle Yanok, ARC’s director of franchise services. ARC’s other clients include the National Archives and Records Administration, the Mint and the Executive Office of the President.

Giselle Jones, OPM’s director of financial systems modernization, said the agencies conducted about 15 sessions in April and May, looking at functions such as procurement, requisition, posting to the general ledger, accounts receivable and reimburseable funds.

ARC’s Oracle Federal Financial System 11i did not meet OPM’s needs for reimbursables, meaning OPM would need a customized application. Crawford said a customized interface would be too costly because of development and maintenance costs.

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-Jason Miller, GCN.com

OPM drops effort to shift financial management to Treasury bureau

A much-touted effort to move the Office of Personnel Management's back-end financial management operations to the Bureau of Public Debt's Administrative Resource Center has collapsed.

In an announcement released last week, OPM officials said they will conduct a public-private competition to determine the best place for the agency's financial management and procurement operations. The contest will take place by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, which begins July 1.

As part of a consolidation effort known as the lines of business initiative, the Office of Management and Budget generally requires agencies that want to change or upgrade their financial management systems to move either to an agency-run shared service provider or to a qualified private sector provider. OPM's competition will be held according to financial management lines of business guidelines released in September.

The competition will result in the selection of a public or private sector shared service center that has experience operating technology that is certified by the General Services Administration's Financial System Integration Office.

OPM selected the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt -- which is on a list of OMB-approved shared service providers -- to run its financial management systems in August 2005.

The transition was scheduled to be complete in 2007, but last week's OPM announcement stated that the effort to "implement a tailored solution" was canceled.

With 5,000 employees, OPM would have been one of the largest agencies to turn to a government shared-service center for its financial management needs.

Peter Hollenbach, a spokesman for the Bureau of Public Debt, said the decision for OPM to fulfill its financial management needs elsewhere was mutual. The bureau's administrative resource center, located in Parkersburg, W.Va., currently provides service to 63 small government agencies and employs about 500 people.

-Daniel Pulliam, GovExec.com

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OPM searches for financial management providers

The Office of Personnel Management has ended an effort to develop financial management and procurement systems with the Bureau of the Public Debt and will conduct a public/private competition to acquire them, according to an OPM announcement issued Nov. 21.

The agency is looking for software, integration, hosting and application management services for the systems. OPM will conduct the competition according to Financial Management Line-of-Business guidelines. It may be the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 before the agency begins the competitions, however.

Through the competition, OPM will choose a shared service center, either in an agency or the private sector. OPM needs to enhance the agency's ability to generate accurate and up-to-date financial information, to prepare for future upgrades and to implement enhancements certified by the General Services Administration's Financial Systems Integration Office.

The Office of Management and Budget named the Bureau of the Public Debt as one of four agencies qualified to become a shared service center in financial management. OPM officials did not offer any additional explanation for ending the joint effort.

- Michael Hardy, FCW.com

OPM cancels work on financial management system

The Office of Personnel Management has canceled a year-old contract with the Treasury Department to upgrade its financial management and procurement systems. It will put the project up for bids again next year.

OPM selected Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center in August 2005, rejecting bids from other federal shared service centers and the private sector. At the time, OPM said it selected Treasury’s center because OPM’s financial management system could be married easily to Treasury’s Oracle financial system.

But in a Nov. 20 press release, OPM announced it will hold a public-private competition by next summer to migrate its financial management and procurement systems to a new shared service center, public or private. The winning contractor must have demonstrated experience with commercial off-the-shelf software that is certified by the General Services Administration’s Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) and must be able to leverage its expertise and other resources to achieve the best value for the agency, OPM said.

The need to implement recent FSIO enhancements, facilitate future upgrades and support, and generate timely and accurate financial information drove OPM’s decision to move to another shared service center, OPM said.

-Tim Kauffman, FederalTimes.com

GAO: Federal Reserve needs better controls over auction systems

"The Federal Reserve needs to bolster security controls for its distributed-based systems and supporting network environment used for Treasury Department securities auctions, the Government Accountability Office said.

Federal Reserve banks have in general implemented effective information system controls over the mainframe applications they maintain and operate for the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt to support auctions and financial reporting, GAO said in its report released yesterday. But Fed banks did not consistently identify and authenticate users to prevent unauthorized access, ensure that access was authorized only when necessary and appropriate, and implement adequate boundary protections to limit connectivity to systems that process Public Debt business.

'Without consistent application of these controls, the auction information and computing resources for key distributed-based auction systems remain at increased risk of unauthorized and possibly undetected use, modification, destruction and disclosure,' GAO said in its report authored by Gregory Wilshusen, director of GAO's information security issues; Keith Rhodes, GAO's chief technologist; and Gary Engel, director of GAO financial management and assurance.

The Federal Reserve needs to establish a management structure to ensure that decentralized IT security is effective and put in place an application test environment for the auction systems. The Fed also should correct weaknesses in identification authentication, authorization, boundary protection, encryption, auditing, and monitoring and configuration management.

The Fed has already taken corrective actions, including improving its ability to coordinate and oversee its operational and technical environments, and replacing its existing auction applications and operational infrastructure by the end of 2007, said Louise Roseman, director of the Federal Reserve’s division of Reserve bank operations and payments systems.

“We have also taken actions to improve our ability to coordinate and oversee our complex IT systems effectively,” she said.

The Fed and Treasury plan to validate the integrity of the new application and infrastructure at several points during the development of the application, she said. "

CFO looks to other agencies for financial management systems

"After scrapping a multimillion-dollar plan to consolidate its financial management systems, the Homeland Security Department is looking instead at piggybacking onto already existing systems.

Chief Financial Officer Andrew Maner said in a Jan. 10 interview that the department decided that using existing financial management systems will be more efficient than spending millions to develop a new one. Under this vision, Homeland Security will still have several systems, but fewer than it does now.

Homeland Security is figuring out which financial management functions its agencies need and what systems are available.

Maner said Homeland Security will look at both financial management systems run by department components such as the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and systems provided by agencies that the Office of Management and Budget has designated centers of excellence.

OMB is pushing all agencies to buy financial management services from the Transportation Department, General Services Administration, the Interior Department's National Business Center, and the Treasury Department's Bureau of Public Debt. OMB says consolidating financial services - as well as other areas such as human resources and grants - would save resources and improve efficiency.

The department has had problems managing its finances since its creation in March 2003. Inspector General Richard Skinner, former IG Clark Kent Ervin, lawmakers and others have highlighted problems the department has tracking and managing funds, property, equipment and accounting.

Maner said agencies that must improve their financial management, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are meeting with him regularly to discuss what they need and what systems might fill those requirements.

Maner wants to have a plan by the end of March spelling out which agencies will move first and to what systems. He wants the first agencies to transfer by the end of September.

Maner said about five or six agencies need help with financial management. The process could take two or three years to complete, Maner said, but a total cost has not yet been estimated.

Maner also wants to create a “data mart” that will work in concert with agency financial systems to collect Homeland Security’s financial information in one place. This will help the agency more easily compile reports and give Maner quicker access to information he needs to make daily decisions as CFO."

EPA Releases Financial System Modernization Project RFP

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) releases solicitation for its Financial System Modernization Project, a key element of the overall Financial Replacement System plan.

"The project is framed by EPA's business requirements and the objectives set forth by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Financial Management Line of Business (FM-LoB) initiative under the President's Management Agenda. EPA will ensure that it implements a solution consistent with the FM-LoB vision: to establish the framework for a government-wide financial management solution that is efficient and improves business performance while ensuring integrity in accountability, financial controls, and mission effectiveness.

EPA will use a single stage acquisition that includes three elements - software, integration, and hosting. Consistent with the FM-LoB approach, EPA will consider Government designated Centers of Excellence for Financial Management as well as private sector providers as part of its best-value determination. Centers of Excellence are the Department of Transportation, Department of the Interior, General Services Administration, and Bureau of the Public Debt."

Proposals are due March 7, 2006.

OMB to guide agencies on financial management LOB

The Office of Management and Budget will furnish guidance by the end of this month or in early January 2006 to help agencies determine how they should select a federal provider of financial-management services, an Office of Management and Budget official said yesterday.

The guidance aims to encourage agencies to participate in the financial management Line of Business initiative. Under the Lines of Business Consolidation initiative, when agencies have to replace existing financial systems they would be required to consider federal and industry financial-management centers of excellence.

OMB has designated four agencies as financial-management centers of excellence: the General Services Administration, the Transportation Department, the Interior Department's National Business Center and the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt.

The guidance will advise agencies on how to structure a request for proposals to allow competition on a level playing field between private and public offerors.

OPM signs up with Bureau of Public Debt for financial services

The Office of Personnel Management has become the first large agency to move to a center of excellence under the Financial Management Line of Business Consolidation initiative. Agency officials signed an agreement with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt to use their Administrative Resource Center’s core financial management and procurement systems. ARC is one of four financial management centers of excellence named by OMB in the fiscal 2006 budget request. The others are the General Services Administration, the Interior Department’s National Business Center and the Transportation Department. OPM will transfer its data and integrate its feeder systems into ARC’s Oracle Federal Financial System 11i by Oct. 1, 2006.