Government Leader home > August 2005 issue
August 2005; Vol. 1 No. 3
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: EXEC Forum draws LINES on OMB’s Lines of Business
By Trudy Walsh
The Office of Management and Budget’s financial management Lines of Business initiative sounds like a great idea: Offload agencies’ core financial systems—important but unglamorous applications like general ledger, accounts receivable and accounting systems—to specialized Centers of Excellence. Federal agencies can then devote themselves fully to their true missions. The initiative will streamline costs and boost efficiency.
Yet at a forum hosted this spring by CGI-AMS of Fairfax, Va., a group of federal executives compared the OMB initiative to transplant surgery.
“You’re taking a core component and putting it into another body,” and opening the system up to complications, said John Marshall, a vice president with CGI-AMS and former assistant administrator and CIO of the Agency for International Development.
The forum, first in a series hosted by CGI-AMS, was attended by 16 federal financial and technology executives from agencies both large and small, and OMB.
Participants agreed on three elements that will have to become part and parcel of the financial management Lines-of-Business initiative if it is to succeed:
Modernization going beyond transaction processing
Active and consistent OMB governance of consolidation
Tangible, clearly demonstrated cost savings.
But no one denied the need for more-efficient, streamlined financial management.
“Think of the current environment,” Marshall said. “Every agency has its own back-office functions for financial management, human resources, procurement. These are stovepipes that, frankly, are under-resourced, and many don’t perform that well. By offloading this operational activity that consumes them now, it will free them up to do more strategic decision-making.”
It’s never easy to give up control, and that’s what chief financial officers will have to do, Marshall said. The LOB initiative will also require CFOs to look at employment retention issues, another hard task, he said.
CFOs will need to develop trust in outsourced service providers. That’s why it’s so important for CFOs to make sure they’re working with providers who understand the federal financial management environment. “Work with someone who’s been there and done this,” he said.
Other recommendations from the forum include:
- CFOs and CIOs have to work together more.
- OMB has to provide specific data standards.
- OMB needs to provide better governance to resolve problems that arise during migration to the Centers of Excellence.
- OMB needs to provide a clear funding strategy.
—Trudy Walsh
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