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 from 2002 through 2010. Specific
projects have been selected on the merit of each business
case. The broad categories of system investment 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
- Unified Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking System
(FACTS)
Core Financial System: Phoenix’s underlying
Momentum Financials 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
telecommunications 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 assistance system is referred to as the
Joint Assistance Management System (JAMS). USAID has a separate
project to replace the procurement module of A&A called
the Global Acquisition System (GLAS). This new system is designed
to replace the 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 environment without a comprehensive contract
management system to support planning, collaboration, tracking,
and administering contract and grant awards. JAMS/GLAS 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 GLAS deployment
activities with the integration 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 Systems: 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 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. USAID is also evaluating
a “dashboard” system similar to one currently
in development at the State Department.
Business Support Systems: The major initiatives
in the administrative service areas are 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 will 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.
The Unified Foreign Assistance Coordination and Tracking
System (FACTS): The new, unified Foreign Assistance
Coordination and Tracking System (FACTS) combines all USG
agency planning and reporting on foreign assistance activities
into one central data system to facilitate country level planning,
monitoring, and data management. Country Teams will use FACTS
to enter and submit information required for operational plans.
In addition, the Office of the Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance
at the Department of State will use the system to retrieve
data for routine reporting and responding to information requests.
The goal of the system is to provide one repository for data
and a common planning and reporting tool for foreign assistance
resources across USG agencies implementing programs with foreign
assistance funds. Thus, the FACTS data system will eventually
replace the foreign assistance planning and programming systems
of each agency. An additional intent of the FACTS system is
to reduce the burden on field staff of responding to ad hoc
requests from stakeholders, as the system is designed to collect
the information most frequently requested about U.S. Foreign
Assistance programs.
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