Defense Agency Initiatives (DAI) - Financial System)

Abstract

The DAI mission is to deliver auditable Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act compliant business environments for Defense Agencies providing accurate, timely, authoritative financial data supporting the DoD goal of standardizing financial management practices improving financial decision support, and supporting audit readiness. Currently, Defense Agencies use more than 10 different non-compliant financial management systems supporting diverse operational functions and the warfighter in decision making and financial reporting. These disparate, non-integrated systems do not meet statutory requirements to produce timely, auditable reports. The DAI program modernizes the Defense Agencies’ financial management processes by streamlining financial management capabilities, addressing financial reporting material weaknesses, and supporting financial statement auditability for the majority of agencies and field activities across the DoD. DAI will support a transformation of budget, finance, and accounting processes across participating defense agencies to help improve the quality of financial information, supporting financial auditability and decision making. The DAI business solution, once implemented, will provide a near real-time, web-based system from a “.mil” environment of integrated business processes that will enable in excess of 84,000 Defense Agency financial managers, program managers, auditors, and Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) representatives to make sound financial business decisions. The DAI implementation approach is to deploy a standardized system solution that is consistent with requirements in the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA) and the DoD Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA), while leveraging the out-of-the-box capabilities of the selected Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) product, Oracle e-Business Suite (EBS), version 11i (R11). DAI implemented an Office of Management and Budget Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) qualified COTS financial management business solution with common business processes and data standards. The Program Management Office (PMO) will not develop any objects that are included in core COTS software or services (i.e. vendor data from Federal authoritative source). DAI supports the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Strategy 5, “Reform the business and support functions of the Defense enterprise”. DAI is also aligned to the FY 2014/FY 2015 DOD Strategic Management Plan Business Goal 2: “Strengthen DoD financial management to respond to warfighter needs and sustain public confidence through auditable financial statements”. The objective of the Defense Agencies Initiative is to achieve auditable, CFO Act compliant business environments for the Defense Agencies with accurate, timely, authoritative financial data. The primary goal is to deploy a standardized system solution to improve overall financial management and comply with BEA, Standard Financial Information Structure (SFIS), and Office of Federal Financial Management (OFFM) requirements. Common business functions within budget execution include the Department’s BEA End to End (E2E) business processes: Cost Management; Budget to Report; Procure to Pay; Acquire to Retire (real property lifecycle accounting only); Hire to Retire (Time and Labor reporting only); and Order to Cash. Future capabilities will support Defense Working Capital Fund accounting, Budget Formulation, Grants Financial Management, and Re-Sale Accounting (for Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)) as well as a Contract Writing capability. DAI is currently implemented at 11 Defense Agencies and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, (OUSD(C)) (Time and Labor only) and supporting over 9,200 users. In addition, since Oracle is phasing out maintenance of Oracle EBS, Release 11i, the program is required to migrate to EBS Release 12 (R12). The program office is also responsible for operational sustainment of the system. Funds are required for additional government and contractor support, licenses, maintenance, and hardware to accomplish the remaining capability developments and organizational deployments, complete the R12 upgrade, initiate the annual Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE 16) assertion packages, and sustain the system. The benefits of DAI are: - Common business processes and data standards; - Access to real-time financial data transactions; - Significantly reduced data reconciliation requirements; - Enhanced analysis and decision support capabilities; Standardized line of accounting with the use of SFIS; and - Use of United States Standard General Ledger (USSGL) Chart of Accounts to resolve DoD material weaknesses and deficiencies. The DAI PMO will provide the R12 Upgrade system integration services that include: acquisition management, project management; blueprinting; design, build, and unit test; developing required Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Extensions, Forms and Workflows (RICEFW) objects; testing (information assurance, integration, functional, performance, conversion, security, user acceptance, operational); end-user training (train the trainer/change management preparing the users for the cross functional skills and awareness needed to perform well with an integrated enterprise resource planning system); system deployment; conversion; information assurance; sustainment; data service; help desk support; as well as studies and analysis support.

Document Details

• Document Type: Project
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2016
• Source ID: 1_0605080S_5_0400_PB_2016

Tags

Fields of Study

• Business

Readers

• Defense Financial Management and Audit.
• Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.