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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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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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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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

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

Small in a big world

A tiny federal agency that provides grants to African enterprises and community organizations pays a shared-services provider to manage its financial transactions. The African Development Foundation has so few transactions that it could track them on a spreadsheet. Nevertheless, the micro-agency must comply with the same requirements for using certified financial management systems and internal controls as its super-sized siblings — the Defense and Homeland Security departments, for example.

The small foundation is among dozens of agencies that operate with staffs and budgets a fraction of those of the largest federal agencies. Think of them as the mom and pop stores of the federal government. Their size makes it difficult for them to meet the voluminous reporting and governance requirements established by Congress and the Office of Management and Budget, but they must play by the big boys’ rules.

Just as legislation affects all agencies regardless of size, the same is true when OMB issues a new policy. Small agencies must toe the line. Small-agency CIOs must be able to show OMB that their information technology spending produces the intended results and improves agency performance. They must produce documentation to show that their systems and data are secure, said Andrea Wuebker, an OMB spokeswoman.

Likewise, small-agency chief financial officers must accurately account for their resources and use internal controls to minimize waste and abuse.

To handle complex administrative functions and mandatory financial reporting requirements, many small agencies rely on shared-services providers, such as the Interior Department’s National Business Center, the Agriculture Department’s National Finance Center and the General Services Administration. Small agencies are ahead of big agencies in using shared-service providers because they can’t afford a big infrastructure, Forman said.

Shared-services providers offer small agencies the benefits of standardization in human resources, payroll and financial management transactions. That’s a major theme of OMB’s Financial Management Line of Business. OMB wants all agencies to move to public or private shared-services providers when they upgrade or acquire new financial systems.

For small agencies, however, shared-services also have a downside, Westfield said.

Small agencies have experienced continuous fee increases and added costs for system upgrades at the same time more agencies are using shared-services providers, he said.

Small agencies do share a common concern about IT governance as OMB presses forward with its Financial Management Line of Business, said Anton Porter, deputy CFO at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Porter is also the small-agency liaison to the CFO Council.

Many small agencies that have already outsourced their financial management operations to public shared-services providers are in a quandary about how they would go about conducting competitions among public and private shared-services providers, Porter said. To prepare for the type of competitions that OMB and the General Services Administration require under the Line of Business rules, an agency would be in the awkward position of having to depend on its current shared-services provider to compile a list of requirements that would satisfy the agency’s business needs

-Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

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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.

Can metrics persuade holdouts?

OMB hopes performance measures will make the case for using shared-service providers

Federal officials could soon have a clearer picture of how effectively and efficiently agencies provide financial-management services compared with other agencies and particularly compared with providers that operate shared-service centers under the Bush administration’s Financial Management Line of Business program.

Recent Financial Management LOB reporting guidance presents performance measures for evaluating financial-management services. Mandatory reporting based on those measures will provide a credible basis for evaluating financial-management services that federal agencies might seek from shared-service providers, said Keith Thurston, assistant deputy associate administrator at the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy.

Officials responsible for the Financial Management LOB say they expect the metrics and new reporting requirement to provide evidence that will help persuade agencies to use shared-service providers. The Office of Management and Budget established the metrics in the Financial Services Assessment Guide, which agencies and shared-service providers must begin using to report April data to OMB by June 15 and monthly thereafter.

Agencies would use the performance data to evaluate potential providers for hosting their financial systems and developing applications, said Trisha Broadbelt, deputy program manager of the Financial Management LOB at the Interior Department’s National Business Center in Denver. The data will provide a better sense of the overall value that a shared-service provider can deliver, she said.

Agencies have worked with OMB and GSA through participation on the Chief Financial Officers Council’s Performance Measures Working Group to determine which measures would be most appropriate.

Thurston said he anticipates that agencies will comply with the requirement to report their performance data or at least their progress toward setting up that capability. “The results and peer comparisons are in themselves the motivation for agencies to move to better performing solutions,” he said.

Some agencies perform financial-management functions their own way and without a clear business reason for doing so, which makes it difficult to compare their performance with that of other agencies and providers, said Dianne Copeland, program director of the Financial Systems Integration Office. The performance measures will provide data on a consistent level so services can be evaluated and compared.

-Mary Mosquera, FCW.com

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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

The big issue for FM LOB

Small agencies see the benefits in shared services, but large agencies don’t want to give up their control

The Office of Management and Budget’s plan to turn agency financial management upside down has left many large agencies with motion sickness.

Large agencies shudder at the thought of outsiders performing their financial-management processes, and that fear is causing a delay in the across-the-board savings OMB has been hoping to achieve under the Financial Management Line of Business Consolidation effort.

“Hosting, that’s not scary. Someone else handling your business processes, that’s scary,” said Danny Harris, Education Department deputy chief financial officer and team leader of the Financial Systems Oversight Team for the CFO Council. “Nightmares of poor internal controls come to mind.”

At least five large agencies have justified not moving to one of the four public-sector shared-services providers or a private-sector vendor in the past few years. Their justifications centered on the fact that they were already implementing a new system or upgrading an existing one that meets the governmentwide financial requirements (see story, Leaders want reporting on same page, Page 8).

While large agencies have been tepid about using the FM LOB, small agencies are jumping on the shared-services-provider bandwagon in large numbers. And these smaller agencies may have something to teach their larger brethren when it comes to moving to SSPs.

Small agencies have been taking advantage of shared services for years, even before OMB initiated the Financial Management Line of Business, said Anton Porter, deputy CFO at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and liaison for small agencies to the CFO Council.

“If you are a large agency, you don’t see any real examples of a shared-services provider handling a large external customer that has a tremendous amount of volume and complexity in their financial-business processes,” Harris said.

And there really are no commercial providers that handle a large volume of federal financial business transactions, he said.

Despite the perception that shared-services providers cannot adequately handle large agencies’ business, the providers can indeed handle the volume of transactions, locations, number of dollars and the number of heavy users, said Doug Bourgeois, director of the Interior Department’s National Business Center, a financial-management and human resources shared-services provider. NBC, for example, is supporting Interior’s move to Financial Business Modernization System, including operations and services, he said.

OMB directed in the fiscal 2006 budget request that agencies migrate their core financial services to providers when they upgrade their financial-management systems.

OMB said that, to date, of the 25 CFO Act agencies, four have become SSPs and four have migrated to one of them, including the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month (see story, Page 8). Currently, the Agriculture Department, Housing and Urban Development Department, and the Office of Personnel Management are in various phases of their FM LOB competitions, OMB said.

Over the next 10 years, OMB anticipates that two to three of the CFO Act agencies annually will compete to migrate to a shared-services provider.

The Federal Accountability for Tax Dollars Act of 2002 placed the same financial reporting requirements on small agencies as on large CFO Act agencies, including requirements for financial statements and use of a financial system that meets federal requirements.

For larger agencies, OMB and FSIO need to bolster the business case to move. Agencies have to have good financial, programmatic and management reasons to move, Harris said.

The likely scenario is that FM LOB will prove to be good for small agencies; some large agencies will come aboard, some will not, Bourgeois said.

“From a leadership standpoint, it may not be the right answer because economies of scale and effectiveness gains are not achieved until you migrate the service part,” he said. “The transactions and operations folks are where you get maximum effectiveness and efficiency gain for the government.”

- Mary Mosquera, GCN.com

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The National Business Center Takes on the Private Sector

"Can a government organization be run like a business?

The Interior Department's National Business Center is doing just that. NBC, a cross-agency service provider, has a solid business base and a growing portfolio. It's also gearing up to compete head-on with private-sector vendors for contracts.

'We're a business in a federal environment,' said Sandra Weisman, NBC's chief financial officer and associate director for budget and finance. 'We don't get any appropriations,' she said, alluding to fact that NBC can only pay its people if it makes money. 'There is a tremendous accountability there,' she said.

With over 1,200 employees and an annual budget approaching $300 million, NBC is one of four payroll services and one of five human-resources providers for federal agencies. NASA, the Transportation Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are among NBC’s more than 125 customers. NBC’s multitudinous other services include IT, acquisitions, asset management and drug testing. Finding success in a competitive business environment is no mean feat. “We’ve won some, we’ve lost some,” NBC director Doug Bourgeois said, referring to financial-management competitions.

One-stop shopping is NBC’s primary competitive edge. “Our strength lies in our ability to provide a full set of outsourced business management services to our customers,” Bourgeois said.

NBC uses a best-of-breed combination of private-sector and federal employees to achieve its aims. It endeavors to “focus feds on the things that feds do best and to use the private sector for the other things that they do better,” Weisman said.
NBC competes with other service centers in the federal league, but is also starting to go head-to-head with the private sector.

FCW.com - Interior's shared-services center takes on double duty

"The Interior Department's National Business Center (NBC) will soon undertake financial management of and human resources support for the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board -- a rare responsibility given to one federal shared-services center.

In the two years since the Office of Management and Budget announced an initiative to consolidate agencies' financial management systems, there has been little indication of progress. Congress recently questioned the risks involved in continuing the project and whether completion is feasible.

As called for in the President's Management Agenda, the government intends for many financial management operations to be concentrated in shared-services centers, where one service provider handles back-office functions for several agencies to save money. OMB wants any department planning an update to its financial management system to consider using one of the shared-service providers or a commercial one, instead of conducting operations internally.

The board will migrate to NBC's Oracle financial accounting system, a shared enterprise resource planning application. NBC will process collections, manage vendor and travel voucher payments, and generate the Standard Form-224 Treasury statement of transactions for the board.

NBC offers agencies a choice of several financial management ERP applications, including Oracle Federal Financials, CGI Momentum and soon SAP's financial system.

EEOC signs new financial management outsourcing pact

"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a new interagency agreement for financial management services with the Interior Department's National Business Center on Tuesday.

The agreement, which was finalized Friday, is worth $11.7 million over six and a half years. That total includes about $1.9 million for conversion to the new system, which should be completed by Sept. 30, 2007, and about $1.9 million in annual costs. Help desk support, accounting operations and systems management also are included in the deal. Interior's business center will use CGI Group Inc.'s Momentum Enterprise Solution package.

The center competed for EEOC's business against two other centers of excellence for financial management, one at the Transportation Department and another at the Treasury Department. The General Services Administration, which also hosts a financial management center of excellence, did not submit a bid. Jeffrey Smith, EEOC's chief financial officer, said the competition was based on technical offerings and price, and Interior's center prevailed partly because it had a track record of providing high-quality service.

ERP's learning curve

"Agencies taking on enterprise resource management projects often find themselves in over their heads, and they are are beginning to turn to government centers of excellence for help.

Doug Bourgeois, director of the Interior Department's National Business Center, knows the drill. 'Invariably,' he said, 'the question that such agencies ask when they approach us is, 'This is bigger and more complex than we thought it was going to be. Can you take it over for us? Can you manage it? Can you host it for us?' NBC provides ERP services to 'between 20 and 30 agencies,' Bourgeois said, several of which have had troubled ERP projects and asked him for help.

He said that, in several cases, he has had to turn down the appeals. Even though his center runs more than 600 servers, taking over the ERP functions of some agencies could involve adding as many as 200 more.

ERP systems form the back-office sinews of federal agencies.

Properly functioning ERP systems provide agency leaders with accurate, detailed financial data quickly, but faulty systems invite management disarray - and punishment by overseers in the Office of Management and Budget, Congress and other agencies. "