Shared Services Requirements: Kicking the Tires

Buying a car is a process that many of us have gone through at one point or another (more than once for a lot of us). Thinking back on that process raises the question of why some of the simple techniques we use in our personal lives aren’t being better applied in the workplace.

If we can apply four lessons from buying a car to the workplace, we can be as happy with our new systems as we are with our new cars.

1) Focus on what’s unique

2) Leave the engine to the engineers

3) Keep your priorities straight

4) Take it for a test drive

The process of buying a car can teach us a lot about how we should (and shouldn’t) approach requirements gathering for shared services migrations. Use the resources at your disposal to start with the baseline and focus on what’s unique, stay away from trying to design the system, make sure you stay realistic about your priorities, and of course take it for a test drive. This will help make sure that you don’t end up with a high-end sports car when all you can afford and all you really need is the economy model.

About the Authors

Teia Clarke, Deloitte Consulting Senior Manager in Federal Practice Shared Services

Karen Ganley, Deloitte Consulting Specialist Leader in Oracle and Technology Implementation

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DHS management chief nominee's approach is data centric

As Russell Deyo sailed through his nomination hearing Wednesday to be the next undersecretary for management at the Homeland Security Department, his management approach and priorities centered on data.

The retired Johnson & Johnson executive told Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs lawmakers that getting DHS to have standard financial data will lead to better and more strategic decision making.

If confirmed, Deyo would replace Rafael Borras, who left in February after more than four years on the job.

DHS reached a milestone in 2013 when, for the first time ever, it received an unqualified opinion from auditors for its financial management processes.

Deyo said he recognizes that accomplishment and wants to make sure DHS doesn't slip back from there. 

At the same time, he said the next step toward better financial management has to happen sooner than later.

"The next big piece, as far as I can see so far, is we need to have a fully integrated financial management system across all the components. You have to have reliable information, so you can make smart budget decisions and have good analytics to make good strategic decisions. And having ledger sheets that don't match up, and you can't compare apples to apples across the groups, makes it very, very difficult to make informed, strategic decisions," Deyo said. "I think it's critical the agency have a long-term focus, and you can't do that if you don't have reliable data. So that is an existent high priority within the finance group and indeed the leadership of the department, and I strongly embrace that."

He said during his time at Johnson & Johnson, having a common financial system was essential in making strategic decisions.

DHS is heading down a path toward reducing the number of financial management systems used by the agency. Right now, there are 13 separate systems, but three components are moving to Interior's National Business Center, including the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Improving Financial Systems through Shared Services, OFIT Industry Day May 21st

Solicitation Number: RFI-FIT-14-0055

Agency: Department of the Treasury
Office: Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD)
Location: Bureau of the Fiscal Service

MB Memorandum M-13-08 directed all executive agencies to use, with limited exceptions, a shared service solution for future modernizations of core accounting or mixed systems. In implementing this policy, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is following a guiding principle of "Federal First" whereby executive agencies must consider one of the Federal Shared Services Providers (FSSP) designated by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) as eligible to provide financial management shared services to other executive agencies.

On May 2, 2014, OMB and the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated four agencies as FSSPs. They are Department of Agriculture's National Finance Center; the Department of the Interior's, Interior Business Center, the Department of Transportation's Enterprise Services Center, and Treasury's Administrative Resource Center.

A copy of OMB M-13-08, "Improving Financial Systems through Shared Services," is located at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-08.pdf .

The Division of Procurement Services, on behalf of the Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT), is conducting market research in the form of this RFI and an Industry Day event scheduled on May 21, 2014. 

The Government will hold an Industry Day event on May 21, 2014, starting at 8:15 a.m. ET, with sign-in starting at 7:45 a.m. ET at GSA Central Auditorium located at 1800 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006. There will be a general session followed by question/answer session. The general session will include background information on the implementation of OMB M-13-08, FIT's role in the implementation, current plan and associated challenges. Following the general session, each FSSP will provide background on their organization, current platform and customers, challenges, current contracting vehicles and potential needs/desires to improve financial management services offerings. 

Treasury begins shared services quest to educate, integrate

The Treasury Department's Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation is starting to put the bigger pieces of the shared services puzzle in place.

It started by approving four shared service providers — one new one and three current providers — on May 2. Now OFIT is on an education and data quest.

The office issued two requests for information to industry in the past few weeks, including one to begin telling industry about the role contractors will play in this governmentwide initiative.

One RFI , issued May 7, announced an industry day on May 21 where all four shared service providers — the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation and Treasury — will present current capabilities and those they would like to have in the future.

OFIT also wants to gather market research on private sector solutions and capabilities that could be of assistance to OFIT (in its oversight role), the FSSPs (in their service provider role) and customers or prospective customers) in 11 different areas, including optimizing shared services, assisting in customer migrations and identifying alternative contract approaches such as share-in- savings or public-private partnerships.

Then on May 22, OFIT will host an agency day so potential customer agencies can learn about the shared services offerings and ask questions about the initiative.

The second RFI is focused on data management.

The April 18 RFI asks vendors for insights into "the development and implementation of a shared data transfer capability (e.g., enterprise bus) to facilitate the interaction and communication between mutually interacting software applications. Software applications may include financial systems, procurement systems, e-invoicing systems, inventory systems, or other mixed systems. These software applications may or may not be owned and operated by the federal government."

Responses to the RFI are due May 16.

The RFIs are more pieces to this financial management shared services puzzle.

Treasury, which is leading this administration effort, is trying to get data and information out to the agencies so they really get what's expected of them and what they can expect.

At the conference, audience members sought answers about how the initiative works, and the RFIs and several other document or data releases over the next two weeks are part of those answers.

Angerman says the OFIT will post those documents on its website.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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USDA joins the ranks of the financial shared services providers

Agencies will continue to have four approved federal shared services providers to buy financial management services from. The only difference is the Agriculture Department replaces the General Services Administration.

The Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department today announced they recertified the departments of Interior, Treasury and Transportation and added USDA to be the support pylons of its shared services initiative.

By adding USDA, OMB and Treasury partly solve concerns over a lack of competition among providers, because they all offered Oracle as their back-end software. USDA offers SAP's federal financials.

USDA in 2013 continued deploying its Financial Management Modernization Initiative (FMMI), a new financial system that replaces USDA's legacy financial system, according to OMB's January 2014report to Congress on the benefits of E-Government initiatives. "FMMI is based upon a commercial, off-the-shelf resource planning product. FMMI is an advanced, Web-based, financial management system that provides general accounting, funds management, and financial-reporting capabilities that has been deployed to 28 of USDA's 29 administrative organizations."

GSA's decision to get out of the financial management services is no real surprise. The agency said it was getting out of the human resources services last summer, and several government and industry sources said financial management wasn't far behind.

But by GSA not receiving OMB and Treasury's approval, it means one less software package will be available for agencies to choose from (it offered CGI's Momentum), and it's unclear what will happen to the people running the Federal Integrated Solutions Center's External Services Branch or its 44 internal and external financial management customers.

OMB and Treasury's approval of the four providers should kick off a series of decisions that will underlie the financial management share services effort.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Financial management providers ill-equipped to take on large customers

A metric of success for federal shared services is how many agencies are using the capability. Federal financial management shared service providers are facing an uphill battle to meet that metric.

One of the biggest challenges to making this second attempt at financial management shared services in the last decade successful is federal providers' ability to ramp up in a timely manner.

Interior, Transportation, Treasury and possibly as many as four other agencies are gearing up to accept 40,000 or more new customers at a time over the course of the next few years.

As federal financial management shared services providers, these agencies need help in the form of changes to law and policy to meet those goals.

Experts say only by letting these providers act more like private sector businesses will federal shared services find success.

In part 2 of the special report, Shared Services Revisited, Federal News Radio explores the long-standing capacity challenges that current and new financial management shared service providers will have to overcome in the coming years to meet the growing demands of agency customers.

The Office of Management and Budget requires agencies to modernize financial management systems only through federal shared service providers (SSPs). In a March 2013 memo, OMB detailed its plans to reduce costs and duplication across the government through the use of federal SSPs.

But many of the same questions limited the success of this initiative in the mid-2000s, including whether the shared service providers have the capacity to handle large cabinet level agencies.

Over the course of the last seven years, no cabinet level agency moved to a federal shared service provider. The Labor Department outsourced to a private sector provider. The Small Business Administration unsuccessfully followed suit to a different private sector company.

But over the course of the next five to 10 years and starting this year with the departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, and the Coast Guard, large agencies are expected to let go of their financial management systems and take advantage of a multi-tenant set up that is widely considered an industry best practice.

OMB and Treasury's Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (OFIT), which is managing the financial management shared services initiative, are trying to address the challenges providers face.

But it's about more than just money and people. The question is whether Interior, Transportation, Treasury or any of the new providers can handle more than one large agency every few years.

Federal and private sector experts say migrating to a shared service provider is extremely complex.

Beth Angerman , the director of OFIT, said OMB and OFIT will not mandate where agencies migrate to, but there are factors that agencies must take into account.

"We recently finished the design of the FIT Agency Modernization and Evaluation (FAME) process. What that process consists of are a series of evaluative models and artifacts that are produced by the agency with FIT's oversight and assistance to help them get through different gates of identifying if there is a federal shared service provider who will meet their needs," Angerman said.

OMB estimates agencies are spending $8 billion a year and have more than 53,000 people supporting all federal financial management systems.

There is a long history of financial management systems that have failed to meet expectations. In fact, OMB in 2010 reviewed 30 financial systems to ensure they were meeting cost, schedule and performance goals, and ended up rebaselining several after finding they were off track.

Despite this increased oversight, the Government Accountability Office found in 2012 that the reviews had little effect. Auditors said 13 projects estimated no change in their long term costs, and 16 said their schedule remained the same.

So given all of these systemic problems, Angerman said the private sector has to appreciate the changes that are happening, meaning once they were implementing large scale systems, and now they are supporting the agency providers with specific expertise.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Familiar questions, few answers so far for OMB's latest financial systems effort

The departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development and the Coast Guard are planning to outsource their financial management systems in the coming year.

These three agencies have only one choice in how they modernize their financial management systems — through a federal shared services provider.

The Office of Management and Budget's March 2013 policycreated a federal first priority for agencies to modernize their financial management systems through a shared services provider.

But this second attempt by OMB to move agencies to financial management shared services is fraught with the same obstacles of a decade ago.

But OMB believes this attempt at shared services is different. The administration says budget concerns and technology advancements will help overcome these long- standing barriers.

OMB named five shared service providers under the Financial Management Line of Business initiative. With the exception of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the four civilian providers — the departments of Treasury, Transportation and Interior, and GSA — mostly found success with small and micro agencies.

But with agencies spending more than $8 billion a year on financial management systems and with more than 53,000 employees supporting those efforts, the opportunity to consolidate and simplify is great.

So administration officials say the time is right for a renewed push for shared services.

Three of the four current shared service providers for civilian agencies offer only Oracle's Federal Financial software.

GSA offers CGI's financial management software called Momentum. But industry and federal sources say GSA is likely to get out of the financial shared services this year.

Other agencies are using SAP, Savantage and other financial management software that meet federal standards.

Infor and Workday both offer software-as-a-service options for enterprise financial management services.

OMB and OFIT are close to naming new federal shared services providers, with at least one agency providing software that is not Oracle.

Federal News Radio's special series, Shared Services Revisited, looks at whether there still are too many unanswered questions that would doom shared services once again.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Interior takes financial management system to an enterprise cloud

The Interior Department’s Financial and Business Management System is being migrated to an enterprise cloud run by Virtustream, the company reported.  

FBMS provides the administrative backbone to support DOI’s financial transactions, acquisitions, travel, grants and subsidies, and property and fleet management functions across 60 offices. When fully deployed, it will replace and/or integrate 160 of Interior's 162 legacy business systems and subsystems, according to the agency website.

Virtustream, a provider of cloud software and services, is working with prime contractor Unisys to move the financial management system, which is based on SAP software, to its Virginia-based data center, which complies with security guidelines stipulated by the Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA).

SAP application hosting is the first project Interior officials and contractors are tackling as the department expedites its move to the cloud. In August, Interior awarded a set of contracts valued at up to $10 billion to 10 vendors in a bid to transform overall IT capabilities. 

Interior expects to save $100 million each year from 2016 to 2020 by moving applications to the cloud. 

Virtustream is SAP-certified in both cloud and hosting services. The company is currently going through the process to get security accreditation for its enterprise cloud under the federal government’s Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, said Kevin Dattolico, chief sales officer for Virtustream.

-Rutrell Yasin, GCN.com
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Payroll snafu leads to delayed paychecks for many feds

Employees at multiple federal agencies, who would normally receive a direct deposit electronic paycheck today, will have to wait until Tuesday because of a mix-up by the Interior Business Center, one of the largest federal payroll processors.

The official pay date for all agencies serviced by the center's Federal Personnel Payroll System is technically the first Tuesday after the end of the pay period — in this case Sept. 17. Payments, though, are generally provided via direct deposit on the Friday prior to the official pay date, which is today.

However, "an oversight occurred during the certification process" for the current pay period, the center's Payroll Operations Divisions Chief Linda Rihel-Todd said in an email to agencies obtained by Federal News Radio. For affected employees, that means either no electronic payment was deposited into their account or a deposit was made but with a hold on it until Sept. 17.

Some banks could still process payroll deposits today, meaning employees would be paid today, but that's on a bank-by-bank — and even branch-by-branch — basis, according to a senior official at one of the affected agencies.

-Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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GSA plans to stop providing HR shared services

The General Services Administration is getting out of the human resources and payroll shared service provider business.

The decision came as part of the review by administrator Dan Tangherlini. He wants GSA to focus on its core missions: acquisition, real estate and some of the technology services, said Anne Rung, GSA's associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy.

She said HR services just don't fit into their plans anymore.

GSA's HR services provides payroll and other services to 40 agencies and about 30,000 employees, 18,000 of which are its own employees. GSA services mostly small agencies, with the exception of the Office of Personnel Management.

GSA's decision comes as the Obama administration is applying more pressure on agencies to share resources.

The Office of Management and Budget issued a shared services strategy in May 2012, setting a series of deadlines. It followed in March with a memo requiring agencies to consider federal shared service providers first when it's time to upgrade their financial management systems. And OMB created Uncle Sam's List (USL) to have one place to promote the availability of shared services.

OMB is planning to launch version 1.1 of USL in a few weeks that will include a simplified user interface and an easier way to promote existing services, said Peter Warren, who is leading the effort for OMB.

Scott Bernard, OMB's chief architect, said version 2 of Uncle Sam's List is expected to be ready in 2014 and will take into account the findings of a recent survey of acquisition, technology and financial management workers.

With GSA bowing out of HR shared services, including payroll, that leaves only the Interior Business Center (IBC), the Agriculture Department's National Finance Center (NFC) and the Treasury Department's HRConnect as civilian agency providers. But only the IBC and the NFC are payroll providers.

The fifth provider, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, serves only the Defense Department.

OMB's push for agencies to consolidate commodity IT or seriously consider a government shared services center for financial management are major reasons why there is a growing optimism and demand for shared services.

Another area where there is both a need and a desire for shared services is with geospatial information. Nearly every agency uses geospatial data and more than 30 are part of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).

The Homeland Security Department also is looking to expand the cybersecurity line of business. With the recent award for continuous monitoring-as-a-service, Jeff Spicka, the project manager for the Information Systems Security Line of Business, said DHS is looking for more opportunities to set up cyber service providers.

Michael Casella, the chief financial officer at GSA, said agencies need policy help from OMB to solve the funding challenges.

A franchise fund lets providers charge up to four percent more than the cost of the service to pay for technology or other program upgrades. Without a franchise fund, shared service providers under law are prohibited from charging customer agencies anything more than the cost of the service.

Casella said another barrier is the cost of migrating to a shared service provider from legacy systems or switching from one to another.

OMB's deputy controller Norm Dong said the administration understands these funding and franchise fund challenges and encourages agencies to submit a budget proposal to set up a franchise fund.

At the same time, Dong said OMB is looking at policies or guidance for agencies around what recourse they have if the service provider isn't performing well.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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HUD buying into shared services

W
atch for more action around financial management shared services in the coming months.

Industry sources confirmed the Department of Housing and Urban Development will announce its decision in the coming days to move its core financial management system to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service. BFS, formerly the Bureau of Public Debt, provides shared services to about 40 percent of the civilian agencies, including NASA, the Social Security Administration and components of the Homeland Security Department.

Besides Treasury itself, HUD will be the largest migration to the shared service, and it could take two years, the industry source says.

Additionally, the Interior Department announced earlier this week it awarded Unisys a $44 million contract to put its Financial and Business Management System (FBMS) in the cloud.

And the Federal Trade Commission, the Coast Guard and the Commerce Department are in the discovery phase to decide whether to move to a shared service provider.

But the fact that HUD is making the move to Treasury is a significant milestone. The agency's decision has been a long-time coming. It started the process to implement a new financial management system in 2006 by releasing a request for proposals. It eventually awarded a 10-year contract to IBM in 2010 worth $129 million to implement a new system. It was a three-phased approach starting with HUD's core financial system and then pulling in other components. The project struggled and HUD, with the help of the Office of Management and Budget, revisited its plans that same year.

HUD was one of several agency financial system projects OMB focused on during its 2010 effort to better oversee these programs.

On the IT Dashboard, HUD said it would spend $18 million in 2013 to support its legacy systems, and a total of $26.3 million on its core financial systems.

Over at Interior, Unisys will transition FBMS to a secure, cloud environment that runs SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software platform.

Interior uses FBMS to account for all income and expenditures.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Shared services becoming new normal in financial modernization

In terms of financial management modernization, the new name of the game is shared services.

The Office of Management and Budget made that clear last month when it issued a new policy mandating agencies use a federal shared-services provider when they update their financial systems.

As agencies update their financial systems, too often they build costly agency-specific systems from the ground up.

Federal shared-services providers on the other hand, such as the Interior Business Center, attempt to leverage economies of scale and efficiencies both within the Interior Department and for outside agency customers.

"Federal agencies are coming to us because they need to save money," said Joseph Ward, director of the IBC, during an interview on In Depth with Francis Rose, as part of Federal News Radio's special report Rise of the Money People. "They're also coming to us because they see the value in taking those services to a shared services provider."

Ward said this allows agencies to focus more on their core missions.

-Sean McCalley, FederalNewsRadio.com
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As sequestration cuts loom, unimplemented IG recommendations could save billions

Over the past few years, unimplemented agency inspector general recommendations that could potentially save the government billions of dollars have piled up.

Now, with $85 billion in automatic budget cuts kicking in, lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are telling agencies there's no excuse for them to further delay implementing the cost-saving measures and best practices identified by their IGs.

In 2009, there were 10,894 open IG recommendations, according to a report released by the oversight committee ahead of a hearing Tuesday. But by 2012, that number had grown to 16,906, representing a potential $67 billion in savings.

And if agencies won't act on those recommendations, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the oversight committee, said he will.

Issa's committee has sought to forge close ties with agency watchdogs. In January, a letter from both the House and Senate oversight committees called on the Obama administration to fill persistent vacancies in the IG ranks.

The IG community is also beset by a spate of longstanding vacancies including those at six large agencies: the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to the committee, there's a connection between vacancies and unimplemented recommendations. Among the agencies with most unfulfilled recommendations are those with long-term vacancies in their IG offices.

Long-term vacancies "weaken the office of the Inspector General," the report stated. "A permanent IG has the ability to set a long-term strategic plan for the office, including setting investigative and audit priorities. An acting official, on the other hand, is known by all OIG staff to be temporary."



-Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Interior revamps business center

The Interior Department’s National Business Center has been restructured and is now the Interior Business Center, according to a Dec. 6 announcement.

Officials say the restructuring will allow the center to operate more efficiently. The shared-services provider offers business solutions to Interior and other federal agencies.

“The new, streamlined Interior Business Center focuses on delivering a core set of complementary business services in the areas of human resources, acquisition, financial management and indirect cost services,” said Rhea Suh, the department’s assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, in a statement.

Suh said Interior officials surveyed customers and employees, conducted strategic assessments, and met with focus groups to find ways to transform the center. The department is taking a phased, cost-sensitive approach to the transition.

- Mathew Weigelt, FCW.com
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Watchdog group: Four IG offices now leaderless for years

Hard to believe, but the State Department’s Office of Inspector General has been without a permanent head for more than four years.

That fact, highlighted this week by the Project on Government Oversight, puts the office in an unlucky class of four IG agencies that have had vacancies at the top for at least 1,000 days.

The others are the Interior and Labor departments and the Corporation for National and Community Service. While the Obama administration last fall nominated attorney Deborah Jeffrey for the inspector general’s job at the national service corporation, the Senate has yet to confirm her.

But the White House has named no one for the top positions at the other three offices. Although there are undoubtedly plenty of competent career folks to carry on in the meantime, ‘”a permanent IG has the ability to set a long-term strategic plan, . . . including setting investigative and audit priorities,” POGO said on its web site, adding that the administration has “no good excuse” for failing to nominate someone for a post that has been vacant for years.

-Sean Riley, FederalTimes.com
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NRC taking financial system to cloud

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking their financial management system to a private cloud.


NRC awarded CGI Federal a $21.3 million contract to transition the Financial Accounting and Integrated Management Information System/Core Financial System from a federally-hosted environment to the company's Momentum Community Cloud infrastructure. NRC has been using CGI's Momentum system through the Interior Department's National Business Center.

The move to cloud is part of NRC's IT overhaul. Darren Ash, the agency chief information officer, said during an interview last June that improving the agency's technology capabilities was a major priority.


Financial management systems and other back-office systems are among the next areas the Office of Management and Budget wants agencies to consider moving to cloud providers. Former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said in June agencies had more than 500 financial management and 500 human resources systems and moving them to the cloud could save hundreds of millions.


Additionally, current federal CIO Steven VanRoekel is pushing shared services and has a draft strategy out for public comment.


-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Four agencies must move to new FM systems

Four agencies must move to a new financial management shared service provider or to a new software system altogether.


The Interior Department's National Business Center will stop supporting CGI's Momentum financial management software. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Federal Labor Relations Board (FLRB) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) must make a decision in the near future.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission already decided to move to Oracle Federal Financials hosted by a third party vendor.

OMB named NBC as one of four federal shared service providers for financial management in 2005. The other three providers are the Treasury Department Bureau of the Public Debt's Administrative Resource Center, the General Services Administration and the Transportation Department.


Jackson said 15 agency customers are using the other financial management system, Oracle Federal Financials. NBC has hosted Momentum since 2008.

Along with EEOC, NTSB is evaluating a move to Oracle as well, Jackson said.

FLRB and NRC are undecided on how they will proceed.

The three customers that still need to make a decision have several options, including moving to another shared service provider who hosts Momentum, whether government or third party or staying with NBC and transition to Oracle.


Jackson said all the employees supporting Momentum will be absorbed into NBC to work on the Oracle system or on other service offerings outside of financial management.


-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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FAR update clarifies interagency contracting responsibilities

Anytime the Defense Department hires another federal agency to do procurements for it, those servicing agencies are now responsible in regulation for ensuring that the General Services Administration schedule orders they place on behalf of the DoD comply with Defense regulations.

The new regulation--part of an interim rule made effective Dec. 13 and so subject to change (although, if past experience is anything to go by, minor changes)--settles an argument among federal agencies about how far regulations from the original customer agency penetrate past the level of another federal agency hired to perform procurement services. The answer is all the way.

The rule, in fact, applies to the entire government, but the Defense Department is the federal agency with the most involved set of department-specific regulations and so generally the most likely to have a difference from federalwide regulations. The new rule specifically states that the contracting officer placing the order is responsible for applying the regulatory and statutory requirements of the agency for which the order is being placed. The same goes when establishing a GSA blanket purchase agreement. The new language is part of a revised Part 8.404(b)(1) of the Federal Acquisition Regulation

-David Perera, FierceGovernmentIT.com
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DOI's National Business Center (NBC) Posts Financial Management Whitepapers Online

Located within the Department of the Interior, for more than 30 years the National Business Center (NBC) supports the Offices and Bureaus within the Department, as well as federal agencies outside the Department, as a Shared Service Center.   NBC provides a diverse, yet integrated set of administrative solutions, and are currently the only federal agency designated by both OMB and OPM as a Center of Excellence in the financial management and human resources lines of business.

NBC recently updated its Financial Management Resource Library, which includes a series of White Papers.

Visit the NBC Resource Library for Financial Management Here

OMB approves 26 large IT projects for further funding - FederalTimes.com

Federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced today that 26 IT projects that have been halted for review will be considered as "high risk" and require more robust management plans and additional review before moving forward.

The projects span 15 federal agencies and exceed $30 billion in lifecycle costs, Kundra said in a call with reporters.

One of the projects listed by OMB as high risk is a $7.6 billion effort to overhaul the IT infrastructure at the Interior Department, the most costly of the projects. Already, $500 million has been spent on the project alone this fiscal year.

At the Justice Department, $557 million will go toward its Sentinel case-management system. Two of the project's four phases have been completed, but not without cost and scheduling delays, said Vance Hitch, the Justice Department's CIO.

In addition, the Office of Personnel Management's project to automate its paper-based retirement processing system was also deemed high risk.

Data from the Office of Management and Budget's IT Dashboard — a website that tracks the performance of federal information technology projects — was used to help determine the fate of the projects.

One of the projects halted in June was cancelled: an estimated $400 million financial management modernization project at the Veterans Affairs Department called Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise.

-NICOLE BLAKE JOHNSON , FederalTimes.com
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http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100823/IT04/8230301/