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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Air Force's progress raises DoD's confidence toward audit readiness

Air Force officials say the service is making up the most ground of any of the military services as part of the push to finally get the Defense Department to successfully close its financial books.

But government auditors say this entire Pentagon effort is at risk because of shortcomings in the services' technology systems.

Jamie Morin, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for financial management and comptroller, said he is more optimistic than ever before because the service put money and people behind the problem.

Morin said during a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that there is an increased likelihood that the Air Force will meet the 2017 deadline to have its financial statements fully auditable and the September deadline of being able to assert audit readiness for its schedule of budgetary activity.

This is a major change since last October when Morin told Senate Armed Services Committee members that the Air Force would struggle to meet the 2014 deadline, and 2017 wasn't going to be any easier.

But over the last six months, the Air Force has accomplished specific tasks one- by-one to meet the congressionally mandated deadlines.

Each of the services and DoD on the whole remain at different points in the process to achieve audit readiness. DoD is the only federal department that can't successfully account for its spending to meet third-party auditors requirements. The Marines Corps in fiscal 2012 received an unqualified opinion on its schedule of budgetary activity (SBA) — the first DoD service ever to receive that result.

Robert Hale, the out-going DoD comptroller, said he expects the Marines Corps to earn the same result for 2013.

While each of the services is at different points, the one common major challenge the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Office of the Secretary of Defense all face is updating and integrating their technology software, specifically the enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems, to meet the audit readiness requirements.

Take the Air Force as one example. It's still using a system from 1968.

Morin said the Defense Enterprise Accounting Management System (DEAMS), is under development to replace that 40-year-old system.

He said the service received a positive assessment from the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center on DEAMS as currently deployed at more than six bases.

The Air Force plans to complete DEAMS deployment to all Air Mobility Command in the next couple of weeks and then more bases by Oct. 1. Morin said the Air Force also is on track to complete deployment Air Force-wide before the full financial statement audits begin.

The Army, on the other hand, is in better shape.

Robert Speer, the Army's acting assistant secretary for financial management and comptroller, said the general fund enterprise business system (GFEBs) is used by 53,000 service members and civilians at 200 locations worldwide.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the committee, said in no uncertain terms if the ERPs don't work, this effort is in real trouble. Coburn has asked both the IG and GAO to continue looking at DoD's ERP efforts.

-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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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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GFEBS financial management system worldwide

Washington, D.C. — The most advanced financial management system in Army history, the General Fund Enterprise Business System, or GFEBS, is now operational worldwide.


The GFEBS now has nearly 40,000 users across all service components, and is the most widely implemented of the Army’s Enterprise Resource Planning systems. It’s expected when fully deployed, sometime in Fiscal Year 2012, GFEBS will engage close to 60,000 users at some 200 locations worldwide and will affect almost every Army organization and function.

The GFEBS records financial transactions with supporting documentation, tracks transactions to the detailed level, and will produce an auditable trial balance. The Army Audit Agency’s most recent evaluation found that GFEBS complies with 1,054 of 1,113 requirements from the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. On-going development of GFEBS will complete the remaining 5 percent for full compliance in FY 2012.

GFEBS received a full deployment decision June 24 from Department of Defense Deputy Chief Management Officer Elizabeth McGrath, the program’s milestone decision authority. The decision affirmed the deployment readiness of the GFEBS solution and authorized Armywide system implementation.


The GFEBS deployment is scheduled to conclude in 2012, providing a core system for managing a significant portion of the Army’s general fund and ushering in a new era in Army financial management.

-Frank Distasio, Army News Service
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Auditors say Army financial ERP program at high risk

An Army enterprise resource planning system--which, if fully implemented, would be one of the world's largest public sector ERPs--is at high risk of running even more over schedule and budget and resulting in a system that falls short of objectives, says the Defense Department inspector general.

In a report dated June 15, the DoD OIG finds that the financial management system known as the General Fund Enterprise Business System continues to lack a detailed data conversion plan and supported cost estimates.

DoD auditors first publically noted both problems in 2008, but the Army and Defense Department have not implemented seven of the 16 recommendations they made at the time, the report says.

-David Perera, FierceGovernmentIT.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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Biggest ERP Failures of 2010

No year in the IT industry would be complete without a number of high-profile ERP (enterprise resource planning) project failures, ones that burn through mountains of cash, bring company operations to a standstill, generate bad publicity for vendors and toss careers in the trash.


There's no one reason why ERP projects run off the rails. In fact, you can equate a typical project to a three-legged stool, with the customer, vendor and systems integrator each serving as a leg.

Customers have to plan well, budget enough money for training and evolve their usual way of working. Vendors must deliver software that functions properly and matches up well with a customer's business processes. And implementation teams have to set the right expectations, meet project milestones and avoid waste.

If one or more of these "legs" doesn't hold up, things can get ugly.

-Chris Kanaracus, PCWorld.com
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GAO chastises IRS over financial system cybersecurity

Persistent, serious deficiencies in the Internal Revenue Service's controls over information security remain uncorrected from the last fiscal year, says the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO, in an annual audit of IRS financial statements and internal controls, chastises the tax agency for not adhering to the least privilege principal of network access and leaving uncorrected an access control weakness in the Redesign Revenue Accounting Control System that compromised the IRS's ability to segregate duties. The RRACS weakness "jeopardized the integrity of the application's data," the GAO audit states.

None of the information security holes undermined the validity of IRS financial statements, but GAO auditors say that manual compensation for information security vulnerabilities is disappearing as an option for the IRS.

As automation takes over the agency--as it's meant to do, under a multi-billion modernization effort--manual options will simply not be possible, the GAO says.

Failing to resolve those deficiencies "could have serious adverse implications for our ability to determine whether IRS's financial statements are fairly stated in the future," auditors warn.

-David Perera, FierceGovernmentIT.com
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- download the report, GAO-11-142 (.pdf)

DoD IG blasts Army LMP

The Defense Department inspector general is calling into question an Army Materiel Command implementation of a $1.1 billion enterprise resource planning effort known as the Logistics Modernization Program.
LMP is an installation of SAP software by Computer Sciences Corp, which began work in December 1999. The inspector general says, in a report dated Nov. 2, that the system doesn't record financial data at the transaction level, meaning that the Army Working Capital Fund cannot receive an unqualified audit opinion.

Defense Department accounting is notoriously messy, with auditors unable to reconcile DoD or military service financial statements. The department says it can have clean books by 2017, provided that auditing guidelines are modified.

Because the service will have to spend additional money on top of the $1.1 billion it already spent on LMP through fiscal 2009 to capture transactional data, report author Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general for auditing, recommended that the Army suspend further deployment of LMP. It's a recommendation that the Pentagon comptroller and the deputy chief management officer disagreed with and CSC announced on Nov. 3 the third and final phase of LMP implementation.

Ugone also recommended that the Pentagon conduct an analysis of alternatives to determine whether it might be more cost-effective to cancel LMP and look at alternative solutions in order "to obtain DoD compliance with the U.S. Government Standards General Ledger requirements." That's also a recommendation that the comptroller and deputy chief management officer disagreed with.

However, Pentagon officials did say they will ponder the future direction of LMP and issue an acquisition decision memorandum. A September meeting of the DoD investment review board also required the Army to come up with an overall Army ERP strategy by this December, the report states.

LMP will be subject to a review by the Office of Management and Budget as part of an evaluation of federal financial management system projects, the report adds.

-David Perera, FierceGovernmentIT.com
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- download the report, D-2011-015 (.pdf)

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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Auditors: CBP unable to detect excessive custom refunds in fiscal 2009

Customs and Border Patrol was unable to prevent itself from issuing excessive custom duty refunds during the last fiscal year due to inherent limitations and lack of controls in certain information technology systems.


Auditing firm KPMG found the material weakness--which also includes in an inability to prevent and correct excessive refunds--during a review of CBP internal controls over financial reporting during fiscal 2009. The Homeland Security Department inspector general released the audit to the public Sept. 1 in redacted form.

U.S. firms are entitled to a customs duty refund, known as "drawback claim," under some circumstances, such as when they export products made with imported merchandise. The customs duty paid when that imported merchandise entered the United States can be the subject of a drawback claim. The penalty for submitting a false drawback claim ranges from a written notice to a fine constituting the amount of the entire false claim, plus restitution.

The amount of redaction done to the KPMG audit makes it impossible to state which information technology system is responsible for the material weakness.

However, the key systems subject to review by KPMG auditors for the report include the Automated Commercial System and the Automated Commercial Environment.

The latter, a web-based portal, is replacing the former, a mainframe-based system. A 2009 review of ACE by the DHS chief information officer found the program has encountered challenges since its initiation in 2001. Among them has been a shifting baseline and significant delays; the review states that as planned, ACE cannot be completed within budget.

The KPMG audit also reviewed the Seized Assets and Cases Tracking System (SEACATS) and CBP's financial management system, which is SAP R/3.

In CBP's official response to the audit, Charles Armstrong, CBP CIO, said he agrees with KPMG's findings.


-David Perera, 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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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

Army rolls forward with Web financial system

GFEBS set for wide deployment in 2009

The U.S. Army’s five-year-long effort to transition its financial management to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) configuration moved forward in late 2008 when the first fielded solution, known as Release 1.2, was rolled out to Fort Jackson, S.C., the Army’s primary center for basic combat training.

The General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) is a Web-enabled ERP system from SAP that will allow the Army to share financial, asset and accounting data across the service. The GFEBS implementation involves standardizing financial management and accounting functions such as reimbursables between commands, and real property inventory and management across the Army. It will ultimately serve 79,000 users at about 200 installations around the world, and will manage about $200 billion in spending by the active Army, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves.

The Fort Jackson deployment went out to about 250 users. Release 1.2 will begin the process of subsuming the Army’s Standard Financial System (STANFINS) and Standard Operation and Maintenance Army Research & Development System (SOMARDS), as well as the majority of their feeder systems, and over time will create a single access point for all Army financial, asset management and real property information.

Eventually, 84 systems will subsume all or part of their functionality to GFEBS, according to Jones. Not every Army financial system will fall under the GFEBS umbrella, at least not right away.

For 2009, the plan is to introduce GFEBS Release 1.3 in April to the rest of Fort Jackson, and also to Fort Benning, Ga., and Fort Stewart, Ga. Release 1.3 is aimed mainly at replacing STANFINS, with new functionality that automates processes and interfaces with the funds control module to bring in supply data.

October 2009 will see the rollout of Release 1.4 to nine major installations in the Southeast U.S. It is at that point that GFEBS will take over more of the SOMARDS function.

- Barry Rosenburg, DefenseSystems.com

DHS tries for financial IT consolidation

The Homeland Security Department is looking for a contractor to carry out its Transformation and Systems Consolidation program, which aims to create a single, unified information technology system for financial, acquisition and asset management. Industry sources estimate the financial systems consolidation contract could be valued at $400 million.

The IT acquisition program is on the Office of Management and Budget’s High-Risk List and Management Watch List.

Earlier this year, DHS officials said they were planning to consolidate financial systems on Oracle and SAP platforms. On March 17, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that the choice represented an improper sole-source procurement and ordered DHS to conduct an open competition.

The department’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer released a draft request for information Oct. 24 seeking an enterprise solution, along with integration services and program support. Comments are due by Nov. 7, with proposals likely to be due by Dec. 15.

In the RFI, DHS said it intends to award a single indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity performance-based contract for a five-year base period with five one-year optional extensions.

The CFO office’s goal is to “acquire 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,” the draft RFI states.

The department is seeking a partner to help transition its 22 component agencies to the integrated enterprise solution.

The contractor must provide a system life cycle approach to analysis, documentation, design, development and configuration; IT security controls and integration; unit and system integration testing, quality assurance testing and user acceptance testing; implementation; training; and operations, maintenance and enhancements, the RFI states.

-Alice Lipowicz, FCW.com
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