Phoenix Financial System

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. The USAID mission states: The Agency partners with others to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our security and prosperity.

The Financial Systems Division (M/CFO/FS) supports USAID’s financial management operations and the Agency’s ability to effectively and efficiently analyze, allocate, and report on foreign assistance funds. M/CFO/FS helps the Agency achieve its performance measurements, which include timely financial reporting, elimination of material weaknesses in internal control, the achievement of unmodified (“clean”) audit opinions, and implementing financial management systems and processes that meet Federal requirements. Further, M/CFO/FS manages the development and implementation of Phoenix, USAID’s worldwide financial system. M/CFO/FS provides operational support and security administration for Phoenix, and coordinates with M/CIO staff, Department of State, Office of Inspector General (OIG), contractors, system owners, and other stakeholders as necessary to maintain the financial system. Phoenix is the USAID financial system and the Agency’s accounting system of record based on a COTS package and configured for USAID operations. Phoenix includes modules such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Budget Execution, which are required to perform necessary accounting operations. Phoenix must conform to strict regulatory audit requirements promulgated by the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Treasury, and the General Accountability Office.

Phoenix is a USAID system and major application hosted at the Department of State’s Global Financial Management Center in Charleston, SC. It has been hosted at Department of State since 2006 at the direction of OMB and the Office of the Inspector General at both Dept. of State and USAID. Users of Phoenix and its data are located in the Washington, DC metro area (headquarters) and in about 50 missions worldwide. It is accessible only from internal USAID and Department of State networks (AIDNET and Opennet). On these secure networks, Phoenix is accessible via Username and Password and via Single Sign-On enabled by the Agency’s chosen federated identity management solution, PingIdentity’s PingFederate. There is not a mobile app or mobile-enabled method of accessing Phoenix.

Using secure File Transfer Protocol (FTPS), Phoenix securely imports detailed payroll data into its ePayroll module from USDA’s NFC for summarizing into accounting records, before exporting the detailed data to the USAID Payroll Reporting Database for historical records also through the use of FTPS.