Planned Major System Investments
Implementing the target financial management system structure will take several more years. The required major system investments will be identified, planned, and sequenced as part of a business transformation initiative that began in 2002 and will extend into 2006. Specific projects will be selected on the merit of each business case. The broad categories of system investment will include:
- Core Financial System
- Acquisition and Assistance/Procurement System
- Budget Formulation System
- Data Repositories and Reporting Systems
- Executive Information Systems
- Business Support Systems
- Third Party Service Providers
Core Financial System: Phoenix's underlying Momentum Financial product line will be upgraded through successive product releases to ensure sustained compliance with changing federal requirements and the evolution of technology in the commercial marketplace. Key among these expected enhancements will be support for electronic government initiatives and internet-based access to Phoenix, including enhancements to telecom-munications capacity within country. Missions will access centralized financial systems based in Washington to record financial transactions and obtain financial information to support decision-making and resource management. An Agency-wide concept of operation will optimize business processes, systems, and workflow to achieve improved efficiency and effectiveness. Phoenix will be integrated with multiple feeder systems utilizing industry standards and proven software integration tools to achieve Agency and government-wide goals in electronic government.
Acquisition and Assistance/Procurement System: The USAID and State Department collaborative capital investment in an Agency-wide acquisition and assistance system is referred to as the Joint Acquisition and Assistance Management System (JAAMS)/ Procurement System Improvement Project (PSIP). The new system is designed to replace the New Management System (NMS) legacy system for Acquisition and Assistance (A&A), which is used only at USAID/Washington. However, more than half of the Agency's procurement transactions are conducted overseas. The field contracting staff operates in a paper-dependent process without a comprehensive contract management system to support planning, collaboration, tracking, and administering contract and grant awards. JAAMS/PSIP plans call for a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) procurement system that will reduce procurement transaction cycle time, accelerate the delivery of foreign assistance where it is needed, and produce more timely and accurate business information. An accelerated schedule for a worldwide procurement system has been developed primarily to: 1) coordinate PSIP deployment activities with the deployment of the USAID/Department of State joint financial management system (JFMS) and procurement and grants functionality with State Department's Integrated Logistics Management System (ILMS), and 2) meet the demands of supporting the Presidential initiative for HIV/AIDS and increased reconstruction activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Budget Formulation System: USAID will implement a set of tools and standard business processes to improve Agency-wide budget planning, formulation, consolidation, submission, and integration with Phoenix. USAID's budget formulation and execution processes will be integrated with its program and performance management processes for collecting information on the performance of Agency programs.
Data Repositories and Reporting Systems: Third party feeder systems generate data that is stored in data repositories to support data reconciliation, audits, ad hoc queries, and reporting requirements. Other financial management systems capture data that will not be electronically exchanged with other systems and will need data repositories to facilitate integrated reporting. USAID will implement an enterprise-wide "data-mart" strategy to link multiple data repositories using common data elements. Web-based reporting tools will be used to extract, consolidate, and generate reports tailored to managers' needs across systems and data repositories.
Executive Information System: USAID is committed to creating timely, accurate, useable, and meaningful summary reports of financial data and program effectiveness. Efforts are underway to develop an Agency-wide Executive Information System (EIS). The first phase of development will pull information and data from Phoenix and MAL and provide integrated reports on key financial measures. Subsequent phases will pull data from additional applications within the Agency to allow for more detailed program measurement and analysis. The idea is to generate reports that will facilitate decision-making for allocating funds and determining the effectiveness of operating year budget program implementation management. The EIS will also be used to provide summary reports to the State Department, OMB, Congress, and the Administration. The development team is also evaluating a similar "dashboard" system currently in development at the State Department.
Business Support Systems: The major initiatives in the administrative service areas will be enterprise-wide deployment of the Agency's travel and property management systems. The Agency will rely on joint vendor efforts to integrate commercial software products with the American Management Systems (AMS) Momentum Financials commercial software product. Future releases of Phoenix will include these enhancements. Initiatives, such as the implementation of a Momentum product that would integrate e-travel with Phoenix, are among the options to be studied.
Third-party service providers: The Agency is expected to continue to rely on its current third-party service providers: National Finance Center (NFC), Midland Loan Services, and DHHS, for the foreseeable future. Further improvements to electronic interfaces to achieve greater integration will be evaluated.
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