-: At FIT, one of my responsibilities
is leading the FMSC Financial Management Standards
working groups, and one of those working groups
is around standards.
Okay, how many of you guys have heard of A-123, Appendix D?
Okay, so if you raised your hand,
you've heard the standards already.
You're just not aware of it.
Okay, A-123, Appendix D, the attachment to that
is the FFMSR, the Financial Management Systems Requirement.
So those have been around since about 2013, 2011,
around that timeframe,
replacing the line by line FSIO requirements.
Okay, these are outcome-based references and about each
of the specific financial management requirements.
So, all of you guys have heard about our standards.
What's been a little bit different is the other three
that have been created to support those.
These are providing more of a business view,
particularly, our use cases.
Our use cases are the stories of the specific scenarios
that you go through, for procure to pay, from end to end,
and it'll show you the inputs and the outputs.
So our objective with the standards was to be able
to turn the FFMSRs more into an outcome
and provide a whole view.
Instead of doing compliance, be more proactive.
So I'm not gonna speak too much into it
because Christine is going to actually show you
how these can actually work and you don't necessarily
have to wait until QSMO is up and running into start,
and I beg you to please come talk to me.
I'll loop you into any and all the working groups
that we have, so that you're aware of these standards,
because we are not creating them in a silo.
We are creating them with your input.
We want to make sure that you own them,
that you're aware of them, that you're able to use them,
and they are portraying the true picture of your business,
so if you have not looked at them, please look at them,
talk to me, and I'll get you looped in.
-: Okay, I have a few questions for you, Jezreel.
(chuckles) What, so my understanding
is that the working group effort has been going on
for a while now, and like you emphasized,
the meaning of the working group is you guys are customers
of this, so we need your input and guidance
in developing these because these are to kind of feed
into a lot of the efforts you're doing.
What do you see as the additional work?
What is the status of the standards today,
and is there additional work being planned?
-: That's a very good question.
So the status of them today is that they're usable.
They're out there for public uses.
I actually, I'm about to provide the 2019 update here
in a couple of weeks, which is our second revision
of the body of work as a whole.
So this is also part of the TFM, right?
So the FFMSR has resided the TFM and everything else
is listed as supporting documentation for that.
As far as additional work, right now, we're in the process
of identifying the most common interfaces
between lines of businesses, so one of the interfaces
that we're looking into right now, if I remember correctly,
is grants, right?
So what does grants needs from financial management
to make sure that we are able to, one,
try to standardize those interfaces and, two,
identify that we're covering all the data
that's required for that transition.
Therefore, when QSMO is up and running
and we are evaluating new systems,
that they actually are able and already designed
towards all the data elements that required
by the FM system, so really, our continuous work
is validating that these information is complete,
and that's why it's very important to get your feedback
and let us know if anything is missing.
Throughout the year, I accept comments and updates to it,
and then once a year, around July
is when we go out and publish.
-: Great, thank you, and as you mentioned,
probably if folks don't get to follow up with them here,
there's an opportunity to kinda, at the end of this,
I'll share an email address.
There's an email that you can kind of send an email
and we'll kind of follow up with questions, answers,
and kind of ways to get involved.
That would be ofit@fiscalservice.treasury.gov.
It's at the end of the presentation, I'll share that out.
All right, so moving on, Christine.
Christine: Thank you.
-: If you don't mind just kind of like sharing a little bit
about this, the scope of your responsibilities,
and then talk to us a little bit about how you put standards
into action in your modernization effort,
that would be great.
-: Okay, absolutely.
Again, I'm Christine Rodriguez.
I lead the financial systems modernization
for Homeland Security.
I lead a Joint Program Management Office,
and in partnership with the DHS components,
we're responsible for, the strategy envisioned
for system implementation in standards
across the department.
The JPMO also coordinates with internal
and external stakeholders, Treasury, OMB, and internal
within the department, all of our components
as well as the C-suites.
As you do financial systems modernization, we make sure
that we're partnered with our procurement community,
asset management, as well as our CIO community.
So DHS has had a very long road when it comes
to system modernization, as many of you already know,
and we just love the OMB memos coming out.
We're working on 13-08.
Everybody here's probably read that one as well.
So we've had a long history of starts and stops
with system modernization, and we certainly understand
and support shared services, economies of scale,
and standardization across the government.
As Treasury stands up the QSMO, DHS can't wait.
We can't pause our system modernization.
We have systems in dire need of modernization or replacement
and components that need integrated solutions
to reach efficiencies, so what we did was we know
that Treasury is gonna have their marketplace
and their QSMO stood up so how do we keep that in mind
knowing that our roads will converge at some point?
Also, partnering with the lessons learned
that we've had from our previous attempts
and coming up with a strategy that keeps us on a path,
keeps us moving forward, but making sure we're in alignment
with the government and with Treasury.
So we took a step back and actually decided
to use an enterprise architecture approach
to system modernization.
DHS will not go to one financial management
or what we like to refer to
as a business suite of solutions.
So how do we drive standards?
How do we ensure that we have standard requirements
across each of these systems with these components?
So we decided to employ an architecture approach
to system modernization.
First, at the top layer, you have policy,
and there's a wealth of information out there
as far as standard processes or requirements for systems.
We have external policies driven, of course, by Treasury,
OMB, and then internally inside DHS,
we have our own policies, legislation,
and practices that we must follow.
Then you have the business processes,
and we really had to understand where we were.
What does DHS have?
I sorta say we have the Baskin Robbins of financial systems.
We've got every flavor.
we've got every product and every flavor of those products.
So what do we currently have from business processes
and what are our limitations?
Are they driven by the system, are they driven by policy,
or it's just the way we've always done business?
And then the management layer
and implementing at the management layer,
and then, lastly, is the technology layer.
What systems do we have?
How do we drive the economies of scale
and shrink our footprint from a technology perspective,
and to what degree do we do that?
So we sorta took an enterprise architect approach
to financial systems modernization.
The next slide is really sort of what we referred to
as a line of sight or an example.
What we were trying to do is really have an ecosystem
of requirements, right?
You have the policy,
you have the external requirements driving,
but then you have components with their systems
that have sort of an RTM
or the requirements traceability matrix,
so we wanted to make sure
we had a bidirectional accountability of our requirements,
from policy all the way down to how the system functions.
So this is an example of a question that, actually,
Treasury called, the office, I guess,
about three or four weeks ago, and this was related
to our annual readiness assessment,
and they actually posed a change
to one of the things the DHS had asked for.
So this was a perfect opportunity for us
to actually look at our architecture approach
and pose that requirement or that change within our system.
So we started of course, at the policy layer,
then the process layer, and then the data,
what data is impacted, and then lastly, our systems.
Again, we have more than one system,
so looking at the system views
as well as the operational views,
we could make a determination
based on this requirement change.
Okay, how does this impact the workforce
versus how does this impact the data in the systems,
and can we do this?
Can we make the system change
or is this just a business process change?
Before that, we would have gone out
with a massive data call, right?
We would have gone out to all the components
with the data call, from the system side
as well as an operational side,
so just establishing the architecture alone
helps us be a little more efficient
and helps us manage change,
because there's gonna be change,
whether it's coming from Treasury
or during our system modernization,
the component's requesting something,
and we have to have the foundation
so that we can manage that and keep it under control.
Now as far as how we got here, to Jezreel's point,
we sort of have this map of where we started
and we had to start back
with just the taxonomy alone, right?
With the many systems that we have in the department,
and we currently have seven
different financial management systems.
First, we needed to all speak the same language,
and it took us over six months just to get the components
to agree on a taxonomy for all 10 business processes
and sub-processes.
From there, we did align the DHS FIT,
our standards to the FIT standards.
We refer to this
as our DHS Financial Management System Standards, or FMSS,
and that's sort of our foundation.
That's sort of where our starting point
and drives a lot of our requirements.
Then we actually started decomposing the business processes.
We refer to this sort of as a level three,
but taking the the FIT use cases,
our current as-is business processes,
and sort of drilling that down.
Then we started with the line of sight
and we tied all our requirements from an EA perspective
to policy, and we also are tying all of our current RTMs
that are in implementation backwards
to the business processes, so again,
a bidirectional tracking of all of the requirements.
And we're also working on a repository for all of this
so that we can maintain this once these systems are live.
And then actionable business intelligence.
In other words, with all the multiple systems
in different business processes, and we talk about,
let's get to a standard, I think that a lot of people
like to say an 80% standard, 20% unique.
Well, how do you know it's 80%, right?
I mean, how do you know that driving all of these components
and all these systems to that 80% is the target?
So you have to do, what we're doing, excuse me,
is a proof of concept of our procure to pay process.
Taking that down to a level four
and then looking at where we can be efficient,
and looking at where it's a system-driven barrier
as far as getting to a standard, or maybe it's something
where we actually have to change a policy.
So we could probably drive to 80% or even 90%,
but what's the cost of that?
What's the level of effort and, truly,
is the juice worth the squeeze, right?
So we're gonna do this proof of concept and then come out
with some actionable intelligence to really drive
what is the standard for DHS on system modernization.
And then once we get done with that,
we've got nine more business processes to get through.
So it's a lot of work, but I do think with our partnership
with Treasury and everything we're doing, from the use cases
to the data standards, and now the interface standards,
all will be incorporated into the DHS EA.
-: Great.
Thank you, Christine.
That was a great example.
I have two quick questions for you.
Number one, if the standards did not exist
or if they weren't in the mature state that they are today,
how would the (mumbles) look different
for your modernization effort?
-: I don't think we would've had that starting point,
that foundation, and I don't want to say
we'd be starting from a blank piece of paper,
but, really, it would come down to how the components
are currently operating systems.
We would really rather drive a standard
and then implement systems to that
versus having our processes
drive how the system's configured.
-: Great, thank you very much.
So, moving on, Laurie Park, so if you don't mind
kind of just introducing your role
in the Quality Service Management Office,
and it sounds like the QSMO is maybe unfamiliar
to most of the audience,
so if you can kind of give a little bit
of a background to that and kind of what you're,
what you've been kind of working on.
-: Sure, so I'm Laurie Park.
I am a Senior Advisor at the Bureau of Fiscal Service,
and I am establishing
the new Quality Service Management Office,
so I had a pretty good setup this morning
with Dave Liebreich, where he talked quite a bit
about the QSMO.
You can see it in the arrow in the center,
where we have the standards, the solutioning,
the adoption, and the performance measurement.
He went over that with you exactly what it's gonna be.
So let me say, to set this up a little bit further,
so in April, OMB issued a memo
that established Quality Service Management Offices.
No, it's not a sandwich, as some people suggested to me
this morning, (chuckles) where we would,
where different organizations would establish
these service management offices
that would establish marketplaces.
So exactly what is that?
So, I think I've been set up really well here
because Jamie Sailing was talking to you
about the government's opinion overall,
and then Christy came and she started talking
about the challenges with the government's funds,
and what you find is that when you look at the challenges
that we're solving, a lot of the root causes
are because your core financial management systems
aren't set up right, and Treasury's had a lot
of conversations with the vendors over the years,
and we've worked with you 20 years, 25,
it's almost 30 years now that since the CFO Act,
trying to establish these standards that you embed
into these core financial management systems.
So when we have these conversations with the vendors,
they say our systems work.
So we bring the integrators in and they go,
our systems work, but we made accommodations,
and at the end of the day,
the output is is that we still have some issues.
I know the reason I became an accountant
is I love debits and credits, and every time
I did my little T accounts, they always balanced, right?
And that's probably why a lot of you are here, right?
You're my people, you like the debits and credits
balancing too, right?
Nice comfort in there, but somehow, in our integrations
of these systems, it gets messed up, right?
Lots of evidence for that.
We spent tons of years on standards.
We set up shared services to try to get that done
with some kind of, with mixed results,
some very good, some some lacking, right?
So what the new idea now is,
is that we'll establish a marketplace of contracts
available to agencies,
where we're taking the core financial management offerings,
so we're talking about the Oracle SAPs, CGI,
any new entrants are welcome to join our marketplace,
but we're gonna work with them in establishing solutions
that are embedded with all these standards
that we already know.
All of our appendixes that we already know,
all of our Treasury manual stuff, already,
and we're gonna invest in that baseline solution,
so that you, when you need to modernize your systems,
you're not having to pay for integration
of about 80% of that solution, right?
So what you'll come in and build on on that new solution
is that 20, 15% that is unique agency workflow
and interfaces.
So much of this stuff can be standardized.
We're talking about all of your integrations
with Treasury's centralized service offerings, right?
All of our payment mechanisms will be, all that stuff
will be embedded in these offerings that we're offering.
So you'll be able to have a choice in your contract,
so what software solution offering you want.
Then, you also have another set of offerings
where you can pick your own integrator.
You can pick your A-123 person,
you can pick your own professional services, right?
Where you'll be able to pick how you want to integrate that,
and we'll be there, the QSMO will be there
to make sure that your vendors
are delivering that standard configuration.
So we're in the process now of developing that concept,
writing it up, presenting it to OMB for their approval.
We're also working really closely with the commercial sector
to make sure that they're buying into this.
We're also working very closely with the CFO community
because we want to offer solutions that also work for you.
There's an equal frustration in the CFO community,
so, most CFOs, and I was a DCFO at VA,
you get really tired of maintaining these systems
and having to upgrade them all the time,
and having to keep the security up-to-date.
It becomes almost impossible to manage
and it's very expensive for your agency,
so wouldn't it be better to have someone else
do that work for you?
So that's what we're working on doing now.
So the standards are what we'll use
to develop that baseline configuration.
The solution management is working with those vendors
to get those embedded into their baseline configuration.
One of the work that we'll be doing this year with Jezreel
is really looking at what our baseline configurations.
We've also developed a partnership with DHS
and Department of Commerce as they move forward
with their monetization efforts that are already in play,
that they'll help us establish that baseline configuration,
so I really think you'll see a lot of interesting work
in the next year of establishing
that baseline configuration,
and then we'll work with agency on adoption.
So adoption is also that kind of consulting,
so we're working right now with Christine.
I'm not sure who's advising who more,
so we'll call it a great partnership, right?
Where we're kind of advising each other back and forth,
so we're trying to guide other agencies as well.
So, and that's what we want to, that will be part of our,
part of our offerings, too,
is we really want to work with agencies,
as you want to look into modernizing your financial systems,
or perhaps adopting other offerings from Treasury
to improve your financial management.
We think that whatever agency you are,
you still have work to do, and I'm sure you know that, too,
so we really want to talk to you
about your financial management plans and goals and say,
what's the best thing for you to work on your agency?
Maybe you don't need to modernize right now,
but maybe you need to work on the invoicing,
or maybe you want to adopt centralized receivables,
so that's the kind of, that's where our consulting area,
the adoption area, is gonna be more than just the systems.
It's gonna be everything Treasury,
and all that goes really back to Dave's 10-year vision
because we want to constantly be moving ourselves
to improvement of financial management for everyone,
and that's what the QSMO really wants to do.
And then finally is measuring our performance.
So measuring our performance means it's QSMO doing
what they're supposed to be doing is marketing
or offering in the marketplace what we're supposed to.
Are my customers happy with my consulting? (chuckles)
And it'll also go into measuring the performance
of the marketplace providers.
Are you happy with them?
Are they delivering what they need to?
And finally, we'll also be working on measuring the agencies
as far as your performance
in developing your financial management plans
and executing them, so lots of work this year,
and please take away Dave's message
about the human-centric approach, so it's really important
for us to include all the agencies, so if you're not hooked
into Jezreel, we're gonna be using his groups as we kind of,
as we frame up these ideas for the QSMO marketplace,
and if you're interested,
that's really who we'll be working with
as we develop these concepts and preparing the marketplace.
Woman: Great, thanks, Lori.
Oh.
-: I'm sorry, I want to add something to those groups.
Okay, don't think it's for the IT folks,
don't think it's for the accountant.
It's for all, okay, because there's different entry points
to these standards is one of the things
that we're looking into as well within the TFM reform.
Okay, there is a view for you to start
from an accounting view, there's a view for you
to start from an IT view,
from a data architecture perspective,
so all of your perspectives are needed, okay?
-: Great, thank you.
And just to kind of give a little frame of reference,
this memo came out in April, and we're in August.
There's a lot of good work that's been done here,
and if you get involved, you can kind of be part
of that initial conversation, be part of kind of helping
to kind of frame what we're doing here, so thank you.
Next, I'd like to just kinda turn
to Michael Landry from OMB.
Do you mind just kinda giving us a quick overview
of the, first of all, kind of like the scope
of your responsibilities, but talk a little bit
about this memo that we're saying
kind of like initiated all of this in April.
Kind of what are the objectives?
Give us a little bit of a summary on what the memo is.
-: All this because of one policy. (chuckles)
Jeez, so here's what's up.
So the Office of Federal Financial Management, OMB,
so we have authority over financial systems.
Comes from the Integrity Act as amended
by the Financial Management Improvement Act,
section 803, and you roll in A-123, OMB Circular A-123,
the JO, the green book,
and that's where the whole compliance things comes about.
So there's another piece to this
that nobody's mentioned yet,
and it's the President's Management Agenda.
Cross-Agency Priority Goal five is shared services,
so it's not just financial management services
that's being, that this approach is being applied to.
I think there's cyber, I think there's grants
or some other things going on across government payroll.
Some other things going on across the government
that we're looking at better ways to roll out these services
to agencies, make things easier, make things more efficient,
more effective 'cause at the end of the day,
we're all accountable to the taxpayer, right?
So we have to make, we have to give,
we're continuously making these improvements.
And that's what all this is about.
I think Christine, I think, or maybe Jezreel mentioned,
OMB's memo M-13-08.
That is, by the way, that's since been rescinded
by the new memo, M-19-16.
That was an attempt to start pushing agencies
into this whole shared services approach.
We learned a lot from that.
Some good things happened, sone not good things happened,
and I think as you see, if you go back and read M-19-60
that just came out a few months ago,
there's been a lot of changes, we've learned a lot.
We've got GAO reports, we've got IG reports
that we can reference as the things that didn't go so well.
So let's take a, let's build on that information.
And a lot of that, as we move forward,
so a lot of that came together in the new memo that's out.
You'll see in there,
there's a governance structure in place.
We've got a Shared Solution Governance Board,
who's taking this overarching look to what's going on.
We've got the Business Standards Council,
which a lot of what Jezreel's work
is rolling into that council.
To make sure these are approved,
make sure these are rolled out across the government.
The governance structure is, it can be as eloquent
as designed or as eloquent as you want to be,
but at the end of the day, what it takes
to make all of these things happen
is leadership that's involved.
You've got, we've got a real strong partnership
between Treasury, OMB, and GSA.
Treasury, because of their financial management expertise.
They've been through this with ARC,
they know some of the pitfalls,
they know some of the things that do work.
It's continuous communications across all the,
across these agencies.
Jezreel kids that he's got my number on speed dial.
I don't doubt it.
That's not a bad thing, but I think at the end of the day,
it's taking all this information that we've learned
and rolling it into what we can do
across the federal government.
These are hard problems.
We're not kidding ourselves about that,
but I think with the leadership that we have involved,
with reach back in deep into the organizations,
the talent pool that we can reach, that we can dig into,
I think that's what's gonna make a big difference
in the way this is all rolled out.
-: Great.
So, more specifically, it's a little bit of the elephant
in the room, how does this new memo,
how do we expect this to be different
from some of the other similar initiatives
that we've been kind of following?
How does it impact the shared services model as well?
-: We've learned.
I think you can see that's (mumbles) the language
that's in the memo.
There's also been a lot of changes in the industry.
Look at, we've got technology changes.
We've got cloud services.
There's another conference this morning on bots and RPAs.
I mean, all these automated processes are coming about.
These weren't available six, 10 years ago.
Well, they're available now, so that's also the type
of competencies on top of additional capabilities
that we're rolling into these.
This is gonna be a different environment, I think.
Again, and it all comes down to the leadership
and the people that are involved at the highest level
that are supporting this.
I don't wanna call out DHS, but I really,
I like the way that the DHS is rolling things out.
They've got, the CIO, the CFO, and procurement all tied
at the hip moving forward with this thing,
and I think it's that level of commitment
that's not only DHS, but I think we're also seeing
between Treasury and OMB and GSA that's really gonna take,
it's what it's gonna take to move this thing forward.
-: Great, thank you.
And then do you foresee any other impact on policy?
-: Things have to change.
It's, okay, so right now, the M-19-16 at work,
it's being pressure-tested right now.
The Treasury's working on their five-year plan.
They're gonna get to the OMB
in the next week or so, I believe.
And Treasury being first out of the box in being, I guess,
being more involved in this and moving farther ahead
than the other QSMOs.
They're gonna have the right light shined on them,
but you know what, we learned from this.
Again, it comes down to the communications.
We're not afraid to call each other up
and call each other out on one thing or another
because at the end of the day,
we're all trying to strive for the same thing.
-: Great, thank you very much.
I guess I'll ask the panelists.
You're all customers of each other's work,
and this is, they're not meeting for the first time.
(chuckles) So did you, as we're having this conversation,
do you have any follow up questions for each other
before we kind of launch it,
open it up to audience questions?
We've told a pretty good story here.
-: I don't want to throw Michael--
-: I have a good question for Christine
'cause we've talked about this, so I think,
I hope I'm not setting myself up here,
but Christine, we've talked a lot about,
as establishing these contracts that other agencies can use,
and that's, part of that envisionment is that,
we want this to be an easy button for agencies,
so instead of you having to go through these long,
drawn out procurements, if you had Treasury
offering these government-wide vehicles and you had access
to them, would you find that beneficial?
-: Absolutely.
I think, and many of you may or may not know,
we currently have two procurement actions out right now
in support of our financial systems modernization,
so, yes, if you had these vehicles in place,
we more than likely would be leveraging those
and we would, in the future, like to leverage those
once they're in place, but again, we had to keep moving,
so, good luck, but we had to keep going.
-: Okay.
Well, thank you very much.
We'll kind of leave it for the audience.
Did you have any questions on anything we discussed today
for the panelists?
Okay.
So we'll kind of close things out here.
Did you have something else, it sounds like.
-: (mumbles) Too easy.
-: Well, I could ask one more question to Christine.
Woman: Okay.
(people laughing)
To go into Michael.
-: So, you mentioned that you're working
with all the components and with the standards.
Can you explain the impact or the struggles,
on how you accomplished to be able
to get all your components to map our standards
and to utilize your standards
and to utilize just one standard within DHS?
-: Absolutely, so, again, and as I opened,
our Joint Program Management Office is partnered
with our DHS components, and maybe this fits
into the human-centric, excuse me, part of this,
but DHS is gonna be a consumer of the information
of these modernized solutions.
We're not users.
The components are gonna be using these systems
to support their missions and their business offices,
so it was really important that they are driving a lot
of what we're doing, so we stood up 10
end to end business process groups.
Then the membership there are the components
and they're chaired by the components
and they recommended who the chair would be,
so they know their community, procure to pay,
whatever the community is, their peers are running
these 10 end to end business process groups.
So as we get use cases in which we need to respond to,
or as we're working through the architecture,
the headquarters facilitates the conversation,
but it's really the components themselves
that are driving those standards
because they're gonna have to implement them
and it's giving them a voice in the decision.
This isn't headquarters saying, you shall do this.
It's really them driving it, so that's an important part
of ownership, organizational change management,
and making sure this is about the components.
Woman: Great, good question.
-: I have another--
Woman: Michael or Laurie?
-: I just wanted to add to that.
So here's the thing.
So the memo, the QSMO memo's out,
agencies are doing their thing.
They've got, I mean, first and foremost,
clean audit opinion, you got to gotta maintain that,
but then you've got agencies like DHS
and we've got these burning platforms.
We can't wait for Treasury to stand everything up
and for us to migrate our systems to there.
We get that.
These things have to happen now.
Last thing we want to do is hold things up.
Can't hold up progress.
So in the absence of these contracts
that are these marketplace vehicles that are available,
the next thing you have to roll down to is the standards,
and that's why the standards, I just want to echo this,
and this is why the standards are so important.
If we can put agencies on a track
to at least begin adopting the standards, so if you look,
if you look at the key, if you look at the marketplace,
as a capability maturity model,
there's gonna be a curve, right?
And nobody is gonna turn on a switch and all of a sudden,
poof, there's a marketplace
and everybody can go to the marketplace.
That's not gonna happen and we recognize that.
So, but capabilities will be stood up over time.
So agencies, as these capabilities are stood up,
if the agencies have their, at least they're beginning
to adopt the standards, they can be migrating
to these systems sooner than waiting for that 100% solution,
or 80% solution, if that's what we're looking at.
So again, right now, I like that the standards are king.
If we can get agencies to begin adopting these standards,
then we can, standardize on multiple platforms,
but at least the same capabilities.
Then we can move them to the next step
would be some type of modernization.
At the end of the day, once everything's modernized,
then we can really begin the optimization process
of really streamlining things and really making things move.
Again, getting to that efficient
and effective financial system we're looking for.
Woman: Great.
-: I have a question for Mike, and he and I
have talked about this offline, too, so hopefully,
it won't be too shocking, too. (chuckles)
(Michael mumbles)
Probably seven times.
So a key component of ruling out
the financial management QSMO is also working
with the other QSMOs that are being established,
and those that may be in line to have their QSMOs
such as procurement, right?
So how do you envision all the QSMOs working together?
-: Yeah.
-: (chuckles) Probably regret that question (mumbles).
-: Actually, no, that's a good question.
So, again, here's the thing.
The governance process is in place.
It's not just specifically financial management service.
It's not specifically grants.
It's not specifically cyber.
It's, DHS is on tap for that.
These groups, these higher level groups,
that's where we bring all the capabilities together, right?
All the discussions.
We want to be able to leverage off of what Treasury
has learned, good things and not so good things
while we leverage off of what DHS is learning,
good things and not so good things,
and pull all this information together.
Again, looking in the, working towards the efficiency
and effectiveness, if we can standardize processes,
business processes to that level, there's no reason
to go back and reinvent the wheel.
We've done a pretty good job with that.
So build on that and what can we move forward with that?
So I guess in, to answer your question,
to put a point on it, basically, it's communications again.
It's making sure we've got the right people
in the right groups, the right teams, and right now,
we have those pulled together.
Woman: Great.
Jezreel?
-: One last thing, because it's been talked about here.
Customer-centric design,
there's gonna be a session tomorrow, I believe it is.
It's gonna be, they're gonna be talking about,
around the TFM, the different modernization efforts we have
with the TFM to make all this information tie a lot better
for you and to be able to be digested
and understood by you guys a little bit more.
So please visit that and ask a lot of questions.
I'm probably gonna get hit after that,
but, there's another also session tomorrow.
There's been a lot of talk about the maturity model.
That maturity model is out there, it's usable,
and there is a self-assessment tool that is available
to measure your maturity model as well.
There's a session on that tomorrow as well.
Make sure you attend.
The CFO from Fiscal Service is gonna go through a case
on how she utilized it internally to be able
to identify uses for that, so it's intended to be a tool
not only for the CFOs, but it can be used
in multiple aspects, and it'll show you
where in the standards may be able
to help you moving forward,
so we're packaging a lot of information for you guys
within the TFM and all that out there today.
Let us know how you utilize it and then how we can improve
on it to help you use it better.
-: Great, thank you.
So I think you teed up some nice sessions for tomorrow
on both the TFM or experience work,
as well as the maturity model.
It sounds like a good use case.
So I'll just kind of conclude there.
As you mentioned, this is an opportunity for you
to get involved at any level, as Jezreel mentioned.
If you have any questions or questions
about how to get involved,
you can go to the Fiscal Service website, particularly,
the Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation.
We post a lot of good kind of case studies and blogs
and things up there for general information.
Specific questions should go to that email box there.
So, great, I would like to thank our panelists
and thank you for joining us.
(audience applauding)