IG: Justice Department shows leadership for DATA Act rollout, but gaps remain

The Justice Department is on schedule to meet the DATA Act implementation deadline — sort of.

DOJ’s Office of Inspector General recently issued a review of the department’s progress toward standardizing its financial spending  reports, and according to the internal watchdog, “nothing came to our attention that caused us to believe that a material modification should be made” to Justice’s plans to meet the May 2017 deadline.

But the IG did note “areas of concern that potentially could impact the department’s ability to most effectively meet all the requirements within the requisite timeframe.”

Those areas of concern range from completing a full inventory, mapping and gap analysis of the department to an incomplete data extraction standard.

The inspector general looked at the first four steps of the eight-step plan recommended by the Treasury Department for DATA Act implementation. Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget are the agencies spearheading the work.

Within the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act is a requirement that agency IGs report on the law’s implementation. The first set of reports was due in November, however, the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) recommended last December that because the spending data would not be available for November 2016, that the first required reports be due November 2017, with additional reports in 2019 and 2020.

According to the review, the Department has three financial systems: the Unified Financial Management System (UFMS); the Financial Management Information System 2 (FMIS2), a legacy financial system; and the Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) system.

Instead of inventorying these systems, DOJ inventoried the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) procurement information in UFMS and an initial inventory of the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) grant award information in FMIS2 — with the hope that the lessons learned could be applied to the other financial systems.

-Meredith Sommers, 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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CGI Cloud takes Railroad Retirement Board to the cloud for $66M

CGI Federal Inc. has won a $21 million contract to transition and host the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board’s financial management systems in the CGI Momentum Community Cloud.

This award has one implementation year, one base year and nine option years, the company said.

Under the contract, GCI will convert the legacy financial management system to its community cloud, delivering end-to-end support, such as conversion, training, change management, hosting and maintenance.

- Mark Hoover, WashingtonTechnology.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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ATF IMPLEMENTS JUSTICE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice announced that another of its components, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), implemented the Unified Financial Management System (UFMS), a core centralized accounting system that improves internal controls and standardizes data.


ATF is the second department law enforcement organization to convert to UFMS as the financial system of record. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) implemented UFMS in January 2009, following a pilot deployment to the Justice Management Division’s (JMD) Asset Forfeiture Management Staff. UFMS now serves more than 2,500 Department of Justice users worldwide.

The ATF implementation was completed on schedule and on budget, employing a two-phased approach to minimize risk and capitalize on lessons learned from earlier implementations. More than 95 percent of ATF’s requirements were met by the standard processes, interfaces and reports already designed and available in the department’s foundation build of UFMS. As a result, the initial design and development was done on time, and deployed to many users.

The department shares the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s goal to reduce the risks and costs of implementing federal financial management systems. The most critical department business need for core accounting functionality is delivered by UFMS, implemented in phases across components with defined milestones, the department said.

The implementation of UFMS, based on CGI Federal’s Momentum 6.3, is a collaborative effort by JMD and ATF with the systems integrator, IBM.

For more information on the department’s UFMS program, visit: www.justice.gov/jmd/ufms/overview.htm
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GAO: Pentagon is years from achieving clean financial books

The Defense Department is making progress toward the long-sought goal of putting its financial books in order, but it will take an extended commitment to get there, a top Government Accountability Office official told senators at a Wednesday hearing.

The Pentagon's business operations have long been on GAO's high-risk list. It is under orders from Congress to have its financial statements in auditable shape by 2017.

In the past, the Pentagon's efforts have been hindered by faulty requirements management, systems testing, and oversight, said Asif Khan, GAO's director of financial management and assurance.
Subcommittee Chairman Tom Carper, D-Del., said new military accounting systems are years behind schedule and at least $6.9 billion over their original budget.

Republican lawmakers were critical of the Pentagon's performance.

-Sean Reilly, FederalTimes.com
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Federal agencies cutting, revising $337 million worth of IT contracts

The Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday plans to announce the cancellation or restructuring of three multiyear information technology contracts totaling $337 million, according to senior administration officials.


The changes are part of the Obama administration's budgetary and management reforms designed to cut billions of dollars in wasteful and no-bid government programs and contracts.

According to the OMB, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to save $180 million and the Department of Housing and Urban Development will pocket about $44 million by restructuring two long-term IT contracts. The Small Business Administration should save $113 million by canceling a contract.

The Department of Veterans Affairs in July canceled a similar multiyear IT project slated to cost as much as $300 million. Other agencies may cancel or rewrite similar deals in the coming months, the OMB said.

The cuts announced Tuesday are "a classic outcome of what we expected when we looked more closely at these projects," said OMB Controller Danny Werfel. Though they amount to a small fraction of the $80 billion in annual federal IT costs, they are part of a series of reforms announced since the spring that administration officials hope demonstrate the White House's resolve to curtail government spending as deficit concerns dominate midterm election campaigns.

The cuts - and their impact on several Washington-area contracting firms - come as the Senate plans to pass a multibillion-dollar package of loans and tax relief for small businesses. They also add to growing fears that the Washington region could face significant layoffs as the government slashes billions in contracting deals.

In an interview Tuesday, OMB Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients said: "Our job is to focus on making sure every taxpayer dollar is well spent. There are plenty of opportunities for us to spend dollars on IT projects that have very high returns for taxpayers. We're going to make sure that the dollars are spent on high-return projects."

By Ed O'Keefe and Marjorie Censer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 14, 2010; 10:35 PM

ed.okeefe@washingtonpost.comcenserm@washpost.com Staff writer Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report.

Find More:

Obama administration's IT Dashboard, a public Web site that compiles data on federal agencies' IT programs.

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VA cancels financial IT modernization portions of FLITE project

The Veterans Affairs Department said July 13 that it will not go forward with a planned financial system modernization project on which it has already spent $16 million.

The project, along with an also-canceled related data warehouse effort, was part of a program dubbed Financial and Logistics Integrated Enterprise and would have cost up to around $333 million to complete, according to figures VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker gave while speaking to reporters.

The VA will continue to develop the strategic asset management IT system portion of FLITE, Baker said; that system is already undergoing pilot testing in the Milwaukee VA Medical Center.

Unlike the strategic management portion of FLITE, the VA has not awarded any implementation contracts for the accounting system or the data warehouse portions. According to an October 2009 Government Accountability Office report, the VA has spent $90.8 million on FLITE so far, of which $73 million was spent on contractors.

The $16 million figure refers to what the VA has spent specifically on planning the accounting system portion of FLITE, Baker said. The VA hired MITRE Corp, Booz Allen Hamilton and Fairfax, Va.-based YRCI in various financial system support roles, according to VA procurement documents (.doc).

The cancellation stems from doubts over program execution, as well as re-prioritization of limited resources, Baker said. "We'd like to make certain we can be successful on a project before we start," he said, adding that "we can't do everything."

In lieu of one large financial management system effort, the VA will roll out series of smaller financial modernization projects, Baker said. The Office of Management and Budget told agencies on June 28 not to initiate new development spending on federal financial management systems worth more than $20 million until OMB has reviewed spending plans.

The July 13 announcement marks the second time the VA has canceled a financial system modernization effort; in July 2004, it terminated a system called CoreFLS after spending more than $249 million on development.

Information technology management has recently come under heightened scrutiny at the VA with the June 2009 establishment of an effort known as the Program Management Accountability System. However, whether PMAS will be sufficient to correct problems at a department with a string of high-profile IT failures in its recent past is unknown. A May 2010 GAO report said that the VA "has not yet demonstrated that it can sustain the wholesale change in management of IT projects that PMAS represents or that this new approach will be sufficiently robust to prevent or correct weaknesses."

For more:
- listen to an audio recording of VA CIO Roger Baker announcing the program's cancellation; also on the call is Federal CIO Vivek Kundra
- read a redacted fiscal 2010 FLITE Exhibit 300 (.pdf)
- download the October 2008 GAO report on FLITE, GAO 10-40 (.pdf)
- download the May 2010 GAO report on VA IT management, GAO 10-579 (.pdf)

-David Paters, FierceGovernmentIT.com
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Federal financial management system projects that have been frozen

The Office of Management and Budget made good on its promise to halt new spending on some federal agencies' financial management systems, last week releasing a list of 20 projects that cannot move forward until new plans are approved.

The programs span the agencies -- and more are likely to follow. In a statement, OMB said it expects about 30 financial system projects to be reviewed, but some systems are still being reviewed to see if they qualify.

OMB Director Peter Orszag called for the freeze on new task orders and procurements for selected systems' development or modernization, citing the typical sluggishness and high cost of the projects. To move forward, agencies must prepare plans that divide the projects into short-term tasks and include active monitoring of their progress.

Below is a list of the 20 projects, the total value of the contracts awarded thus far and the top identified contractor -- by contract value -- working on each one, according to the government's database.

-- Financial Management Modernization Initiative [FMMI]: $118.7 million - Accenture ($96 million)
Modernizes the Agriculture Department's outdated financial system technology.

-- Commerce Business Systems[CBS]: $48.6 million - MIL Corp. ($15.6 million)
An integrated financial management system that has been implemented in 12 of the 14 Commerce Department bureaus.
[DOC modernization remains in the planning stages]

-- Financial Management Support System: $68.6 million -- no contractor identified
The financial management system for the Education Department.
[EDCAPS]

-- CF iManage: $174.4 million -- IBM ($132.2 million)
Used by the Energy Department to improve financial and business efficiencies and integrate budget with performance.

-- Financial Replacement System: $109.8 million - CGI Federal ($83.1 million)
Modernizes the Environmental Protection Agency's financial systems to integrate systems.
[Financial System Replacement Project FSMP]

-- NIH Business System: $128.9 million - IAE Solutions ($20 million)
Standardizes financial data for the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health.

-- Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System: not available - EDS (now HP Enterprise Services) ($4.7 million)
Allows the Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to account for payments.
[IBM is the incumbent contractor]

-- Transformation and System Consolidation: Information not available.
[TASC - Proposals submitted, award pending]

-- Integrated Financial Management Improvement Project: Information not available.

-- Financial and Business Management System: $165.3 million - IBM ($116 million)
Integrates financial management, acquisition, property management, travel and more for the Interior Department.
[FBMS]

-- Unified Financial Management System: $174.3 million - IBM ($150 million)
Brings together existing and future financial management and procurement operations across the Justice Department.
[UFMS]

-- New Core Financial Management System: $63 million - GCE ($50.6 million)
Reduces duplicate processes and provides real-time transactions for the Labor Department.

-- Joint Financial Management System: $267.8 million - Haynes Inc. ($199.5 million)
A financial system collaboration between the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
[CGI recently awarded 10 yr, $400M consolidation and O&M contract]

-- Delphi - $153.3 million - no contractor identified
The Transportation Department's financial management and accounting system.
[Tantus-Onpoint, SRA]

-- Integrated Financial System/CORE Financial System: $24.4 million - CSC ($24.4 million)
Used by the Treasury Department's Internal Revenue Service for budget, payroll and all financial reporting, among other tasks.

-- Oracle e-Business Suite: $102.4 million - immixTechnology ($100.5 million)
Handles accounting, budgeting and reporting for the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt.

-- Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise: $98.7 million -- no contractor identified
An initiative to replace existing financial and asset management systems with integrated systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
[FLITE - rumored to be cancelled]

-- Financial Accounting System: not available - Booz Allen Hamilton ($122.2 million)
Used by the National Science Foundation to monitor and execute about 20,000 active awards to more than 1,500 awardees.

-- Consolidated Business Information System: $97.4 million - Accenture ($79.9 million)
A new financial management system for the Office of Personnel Management.

-- Oracle Administrative Accounting: $22.5 million - SRA International ($22.1 million)
Serves as the system of record for the funding and expenditure of the Small Business Administration's dollars.

-Marjorie Censer, washingtonpost.com
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CGI awarded 10-year BPA with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development

CGI awarded 10-year, US$395 million BPA with the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development

FAIRFAX, VA, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - The U.S. Department of State has awarded CGI Federal Inc. (CGI), a wholly-owned U.S. operating subsidiary of CGI Group Inc. (NYSE: GIB ; TSX: GIB.A), a competitive, single award, 10-year Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with a ceiling of up to US$395 million under CGI's GSA-IT Schedule Contract in support of the agencies' Joint Financial Management System (JFMS).

JFMS is a global platform based on CGI's Momentum(R) software used by both the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development to efficiently and cost-effectively manage domestic and overseas financial management activities. Under this BPA, CGI will provide systems integration, consulting services, and operational support for more than 5,000 JFMS users in more than 300 posts and missions around the world.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: TeraThink Corporation is a member of the CGI JFMS team.

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CFOC Posts updates to the Master Agency Financial System Inventory

Download the latest inventory document here.

DHS Releases TASC Solicitation

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO), Resource Management Transformation Office (RMTO) has a requirement for a proven, integrated financial, asset and acquisition management system solution with the accompanying program management, change management and integration services to implement and sustain the proposed solution. This Request for Proposals is seeking a business partner to provide (1) an enterprise solution that integrates end-to-end business processes in support of financial, acquisition and asset management; and (2) integration services and program management support.

The Department will conduct this enterprise-wide acquisition as a full and open competition in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 15. As a result of this competition, DHS intends to award a single indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity (IDIQ) performance-based contract for a five (5) year base period and five (5) one-year options.

The acquisition will be conducted using an advisory multi-step evaluation process. Phase I will be to identify viable Offerors to compete for the award of the full TASC requirements. The viable Offerors will submit a Phase II proposal and provide a demonstration of their proposed solution.


DHS TASC Solitation on FBO.gov

CGI to upgrade FCC financial systems

CGI Federal Inc. will provide new financial management software and other services to the Federal Communications Commission under a 10-year award worth about $25 million.
CGI will replace its existing Federal Financial System software with its Momentum financial management software and Financial Management Line of Business hosting solution. The upgrade is part of FCC’s Core Financial System Replacement initiative.

The contractor will install the Momentum Financials software suite, including Momentum Performance Budgeting and Momentum Data Warehouse. CGI will perform all integration and implementation activities, hosting, application management and ongoing operations and maintenance, company officials said. The financial system application will be housed at CGI’s Phoenix data center.

In addition to providing full financial management services, CGI’s solution has the added benefit of managing FCC’s annual regulatory and application processing fees. The company’s fee calculation, billing, collecting and reporting functions will help the regulatory agency comply with federal financial and regulatory rules as well as improve customer service through consolidated licensee management.

FCC joins the General Services Administration, U.S. Courts, Environmental Protection Agency, National Transportation Safety Board, Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for National and Community Service, whose financial systems applications are hosted by CGI, company officials said.

DHS to try again for new financial system

The Homeland Security Department will try for a second time to integrate as many as eight disparate financial management systems.

Each DHS component currently uses different systems that range from in-house developed software to services provided by the Bureau of Public Debt to the Coast Guard's Oracle system to manage their money.

The department says it will issue a request for proposals for the Transformation and Systems Consolidation (TASC) initiative by Sept. 30.

The notice says DHS is looking for an integrated financial management, asset management and acquisition management system as well as program management, change management and integration services.

The contract, which some in industry estimate to be worth about $400 million, is for three years with seven one-year options.

Unlike the first attempt, known as Emerge, the contract asks vendors to submit their best system and does not call for one specific type of product.

DHS tried to issue the RFP for TASC about 6 months ago, but Savantage protested the requirements because they called for a specific type of product.

The Government Accountability Office upheld Savantage's protest and DHS is just releasing the modified RFP in the next week.

Several large financial management systems integrators are interested, vendor sources say. They include: Accenture, CGI, CSC, Deloitte, IBM and Savantage.

Vendor sources say they expect DHS to make a new award by next Spring.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com

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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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FCC Releases Financial System Modernization RFQ

Request for Quotation (RFQ) Number RFQ07000021 for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Core Financial System Replacement (CFSR)

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Federal Communications Commission are overseeing the acquisition phase of the Core Financial System Replacement (CFSR) project. FCC’s current financial systems environment is primarily comprised of a suite of CGI Federal solutions hosted by the Department of the Interior’s National Business Center (DOI-NBC), including the mainframe Federal Financial System (FFS) for core financials and the client-server Momentum Financials product for cost accounting (Budget Execution and Management System (BEAMS)). The FCC also operates the Revenue & Accounting Management Information System (RAMIS), based on Digital Systems Group’s (DSG’s) commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) financial system, for receivable, billing and collection activities.

This initiative will be conducted in compliance with all applicable financial systems regulations and guidance. Of particular applicability is the OMB’s Competition Framework for Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB) Migrations (May 22, 2006) and the Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) migration planning guidance.

Please email the Contracting Officer (CO) at Anthony.Wimbush@fcc.gov with any questions regarding this RFQ by 5:00pm Eastern Time on October 9, 2007.

Proposals are due no later than 5:00pm Eastern Time on November 9, 2007.

Get the RFP Here

OPM details plans to revamp financial systems

The Office of Personnel Management has laid out its plans to replace its two accounting and single procurement systems under its Financial Systems Modernization. OPM plans to conduct a public/private competition September through November, select a provider by June 2008 and begin implementation by October 2009, the agency said in its recent posting on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site.

OPM is in the final days of seeking information from interested parties for its competition among public and commercial shared-service providers to comply with the Financial Management Line of Business.

To modernize its systems, OPM will need systems implementation, application hosting services and software through a single acquisition process that will result in one contract.

When OPM selects a provider, the agency plans to first replace its Government Financial Information System, its administrative system, which is an implementation of CGI’s Momentum application. It also plans to replace its procurement system, the CGI Procurement Desktop. Next, OPM will replace its Benefits Financial Management System, the trust fund system, a collection of custom and commercial applications, by moving trust fund management and accounting to the new system implemented in the initial phase. That will result in a single integrated system. Later phases will include cost accounting and property tracking.

-Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

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