(mysterious music)
-: A few folks that are still rolling in through the doors
but we're gonna go ahead and get started here.
Hope you enjoyed the opening message.
Our team keeps throwing twists and curves at us
on how we're gonna present G-Invoicing in a new and fun way.
If you were with us a couple weeks ago down in New Orleans
at AGA, I was channeling my inner Henry Ford
and talking about Model Ts and today I'm Han Solo
flying the Falcon and defeating the enemy here.
So we'll try and have some fun with this this morning.
This is really meant to be what typically would be
your G-Invoicing, your IGT Day program overview
so just a high-level shot today
of what's going on with the program.
We'll try and keep it light, we'll try and have some fun,
give you a status here.
So we're gonna start out today.
See if I can get our deck to come up.
While we're transitioning over decks,
I know our control room,
I've been giving these guys heck back there.
They have really worked hard for us.
I think we owe a round of applause to these guys.
They probably will not get one from any other session
so thank you.
(audience applauds)
Steve and company back there,
they were here extremely early yesterday morning.
I showed up to make sure that that crazy thing you just saw
was actually gonna work.
They actually caught a bug in my deck last night
so that was nice of them to fix that for us.
So they're unsung heroes of the event
to make sure that we can move from room to room
and see what we need to see,
so thank you guys, really appreciate that.
All right, so let me see if this actually jumps forward.
I heard there was a problem with it last night.
There we go.
Our learning objectives for today.
So like I said, we're gonna have some fun today, right?
Hopefully you guys like Star Wars.
If you like Star Trek, I'll probably mix over
and mix the two things up
so if you're really passionate about one of these things,
don't beat me up afterwards.
My daughter thinks I have the coolest job in the world now
'cause I have Star Wars in my presentation.
So we're gonna start out today with a situation briefing,
gonna get you up to speed as far as this enemy
that we're currently engaged with.
We're gonna talk about our battle plans,
we're gonna talk about how you, our collaboration forces,
as we're gonna call you today, can work together
to help us defeat this enemy.
We're gonna give you a status of our efforts,
then we're gonna transition over.
We're gonna talk about ways
that you can engage amongst yourselves
with your trading partners and start your own rebellion
against this enemy.
You are the collaboration forces going forward.
We need you all participating in this
to make this a success.
The journey is not gonna be easy.
We're gonna face a lot of challenges.
There's a lot of forces that are working against us.
We're gonna talk about those in brief today.
We're also gonna address those throughout the course
of the day's events that you see in the program
related to G-Invoicing
and we're gonna refer you to a lot of those today,
really to channel your thoughts and your questions
to make sure that you're taking them to the right session.
So we will have an opportunity for what I call
peaceful negotiations as part of the program.
We need to do that to make sure that you're qualified
for your CPE credits but I wanna caution you
to keep your questions,
keep your light sabers in your holsters
until we get to that point of the presentation
and really think about whether they are better suited
to take to the specific sessions that are really
addressing that specific topic.
We'll follow up with a little bit of
maybe some stimulating conversation towards the end there
and some things you can take away
to make you think about this a little bit differently.
So to start, though, I wanna pose a couple questions to you,
just a couple of fun pictures
and if you went out on the website ahead of time
and took a peek then you know what's coming.
But when you do your monthly IPAC transactions,
when you engage in your monthly, or quarterly,
or maybe it's daily activity,
I wanna know if that's how you view it.
Do you feel like you're going to battle
with your trading partners every day?
Do you feel you gotta hop in that spaceship
and go out there and pull the trigger and fire at them
to get what you need?
As far as your trading partners, is that what you see
when you think about these folks?
Is it this army of people that you're trying to deal with
that's just
it's a big pain to deal with every month,
you don't wanna call Darth up on the phone
and have to complain about maybe a collection
that he took some money from you.
So it shouldn't be that way.
We're on the same team,
but this concept of being in a battle with each other
really has prevented us from having what we would call
this peaceful existence in a world
where we don't have material differences
and we don't have a disclaimer of opinion.
It shouldn't be like that.
We've seen this picture of our financial report up here
over the last couple days.
Make no mistake, we are at war,
but we should not be at war with each other.
We should battling this bigger enemy,
this bigger difference that we have
and I've sat here looking at Ben for the last day here
and I was looking at him last night
when I was going over my notes and I was like,
"What's this guy doing?
"Is he cowarding away from that Death Star
"that's about to blast him
"or is he maybe hiding in a little bit of shame
"that this report that he's on can't get an opinion,
"it keeps getting a disclaimer?"
Something to think about as we go forward.
This was the point in the presentation
where I was really gonna have some fun.
I was gonna have Gene Dodaro, if you know him,
he's the comptroller general come out from the back
dressed as Darth Vader.
I thought that image of Gene pulling the helmet off,
would be really cool at this point in the morning.
He's a good guy.
He probably would have done it had he been here.
So while we don't have Darth Dodaro with us,
we do have Chris Beck.
He's our program manager for G-Invoicing.
He's gonna come up here, level set you on the program,
kind of let you know where we're at
and then I'm gonna come back
and talk with you for the remainder of the session
about how you can get engaged
and become part of our collaboration forces.
-: Thanks, Keith.
I don't think I could fit in Darth's suit, though.
It's a problem for me.
Maybe Gene can.
I cannot.
So he talked about the real enemy is the differences.
Hope you didn't take away the enemy is GAO.
They're not.
They're working with us, they're trying to help us,
but these differences are what's causing
the material weakness on AFR
so for 22 consecutive years you've heard
me speak in the last session and Jamie speak before.
We've gotten a disclaimer of opinion
based on three impediments, right?
DoD, compliance, and IGT.
What G-Invoicing is looking to do
is really resolve the $21 billion of differences we have
but don't be misled.
There's not $21 billion in differences overall.
There's 13.8 for those who were in my last session.
But what G-Invoicing is trying to tackle
is the 21 billion of that.
So from a scale perspective, buy/sell,
I mean, you see the IPAC data there
that we had 92 FPAs and over 700 ALCs, right?
If you look in GTAS for FY 18 on the buy/sell,
when I say buy/sell, Appendix 3,
you look at your RCs and there's USGL
so we pull those balances.
We have $780 billion worth of buy/sell out there.
I'd venture to say beside a few of you,
I know my friend Kirstie there
that general fund does not do buy/sell
but just about everybody else
is probably in the buy/sell universe for a majority of you.
So what's the battle plan?
How are we gonna combat these differences?
We're gonna take a three-pronged approach here.
We're gonna take process, policy, and data.
When I say process, we're really talking about system,
standardizing a system solution
where you guys can go and broker agreements
and exchange information.
So that's G-Invoicing.
Policy,
I know me and Leah touched on it last session a little bit
but we're looking to clarify, enhance and create guidance
related to to IGT buy/sell accounting.
You're gonna see things in the TFM 4700 Appendix 6,
some rules and guidelines.
You're gonna see the G-Invoicing program guide at 3 p.m.
that I would encourage you all to go to.
So we have the system that you're gonna go,
the tool you're gonna use, we have policy,
it's gonna put up the guardrails,
give you the rules and regulations,
and then we have the data, the FIDS.
This is so we all speak the same language.
So we have a system, the guardrails,
we're gonna speak the same language.
I'm not a big Star Wars fan
but I do know a few characters, I guess.
Chewbacca, he speaks Wookkie, right?
Then R2D2, he speaks droidspeak.
I would consider G-Invoicing to be like C-3PO.
It's gonna translate between the two.
That's what FIDS is gonna do for you guys.
So it's gonna be the translator
so we're all speaking the same solution
and from the same set of data standards.
You gotta be speaking the same language
to have effective communication, not just communication,
that's what FIDS does.
So G-Invoicing is the solution
that we'll present to you guys today.
It's gonna unite our trading partners
and basically lead to efficient accounting transactions.
I know we're up here talking about how G-Invoicing
is gonna resolve IGT differences in respect
to buy/sell agreements and help contribute
to bring that down to our 90% goal
that's in the financial management vision.
But there's also benefits in regards to efficiency
and effectiveness.
So G-Invoicing, yeah, we're hoping to see a draw down
in IGT differences, but going to an automated process
and having this communication,
I really think is gonna lead to cost savings for you guys
as far as chasing down IPACs, reconciliations,
and things of that nature.
So from the battle plan,
the first prong is the process or the system.
So we've done a lot of work on system development
on our end, on G-Invoicing, so in March of 2019,
Release 2.2 was released, which was orders, functionality,
and if you wanna learn more about that,
there's an 11 a.m. session right after this in Polaris,
I believe,
that Alex Abshire will take you through a demo of orders.
Also with that release,
we became CAC and PIV enabled,
which is exciting news here for Treasury
and you're starting to see more and more of that
across the treasury portfolio
and there's a section, actually, Wednesday afternoon
about PIV and some of our efforts there.
Our most recent release that showed up on the screen,
though, is 2.3,
which put performance functionality in G-Invoicing
as of July.
So right now, in G-Invoicing, you do GT&C, orders
and performance, all three of those.
In a future release, by January of 2020,
we're gonna have settlement in there.
We're actually hoping for a December
but we'll see where we end up on there.
So settlement, so by January of 2020, though,
you're gonna be able to go into G-Invoicing
and go from start to finish, from GT&C to your order
to your performance and generate settlement in IPAC.
So we're on target to have that out to you guys
a year and a half in advance of the mandate.
There'll be subsequent releases.
Just like anything else, we're always looking for ways
so that it can get better.
We're looking at GT&C enhancements right now,
working on those, I'm sure we'll have some things
to follow up on on orders and other functionality.
So there will be subsequent releases
improving those processes but by January of 2020,
we're hoping to be able to take it
from start to finish there.
We also realize that's our system.
So what are we doing about your system?
There's two systems in play.
We have G-Invoicing that you gotta be in
but you also have your system, be it Oracle, SAP,
CGI Momentum.
Our executives, Marisa Schmader and Mike Lender,
have had touchpoints with these vendors
as well as some agencies for that matter
and we've emphasized to them,
"Hey, these agencies need your timeline,
"your plan for implementation
"in order for them to come back and give their agency
"implementation plans to us by the June 28th mandate."
So from those conversations, they were very productive,
all of our vendors now have plans out there
and Keith, you can correct me if I'm wrong here
but I think they all have a way
to be compliant by the mandate, June 2021.
If you do not know about your vendors,
there's FMSC subgroups you can get in touch with.
You even got the ITWG group as well.
We have information there,
plus the vendors themselves have working groups
and some of you agencies do as well.
So if you don't know who to get in touch with
about your system,
we're gonna try to help you out a little bit as well.
On our website, we're gonna POCs for those major vendors
in there and we're gonna give you an update
on some resources and tools so you can see where they're at.
So hopefully if we can't get you the information
that you need about your vendor,
we can put you in touch with the right person
that can get you that information.
So policy, that's the second prong.
We did system and now we got policy.
We've had a lot of movement on the policy front
since you saw Keith last August.
In September of 2018,
we released Bulletin 2018-10,
which established the mandate for G-Invoicing,
June 30th, 2021.
Recently in May 31st of 2019, 4700 was updated.
The first bullet there, 2018-10, expired May 31st.
So it's not there now.
If you go and look for that you're not gonna find anything.
If you look in 4700 Appendix 6,
that's where you're gonna find the mandate of G-Invoicing
information now, as of May 31st.
So we got that out there.
Also with that published, we updated for the GT&C
and order some guidelines and references in there
to help you guys along.
So the G-Invoicing Implementation plans
were in the mandate and in 4700,
they were due June 28th of 2019.
We'll get quarterly updates from that.
And from that, you may be saying,
"Well, from a policy refinement standpoint,
"what's that got to do with anything?
Because everything else you're talking about
is published guidance for you guys to use.
We're gonna consume those plans
and we're in the process of doing that right now.
So we've heard your concerns
and we know what challenges you have
and we're working toward solutions
and once we get those solutions,
we'll definitely communicate that out to you guys.
But what you're also gonna see is a dashboard
so you can get some more trading partner info.
If you'd like more information
on the agency implementation plan
to the trading partner information,
Keith and I are doing a 2 p.m. session
in the Polaris room again.
So I would encourage you to go to that
to get more information on that.
The fourth bullet there, the G-Invoicing Program Guide,
I think I said in last session,
this for me, for the audience we have here,
this is accounting 101 for G-Invoicing,
is how I would terminology it.
It's gonna walk you through the debits and credits
associated with different parts of the transaction cycle.
G-Invoicing's not an accounting tool.
It's not gonna produce debits and credits for you
but what we are doing is bridging the gap
between that system and our TFN.
If you want more information on that,
that's the 3 p.m. session
after the 2 p.m. session in Polaris.
We had the G-Invoicing System Integration Guide.
Wes Vincent and our counterparts from FRB
and those guys have been instrumental in getting this up
and finalized for you guys.
I shouldn't say finalized.
I use finalized loosely.
All these things, of course,
we're getting feedback on and can be updated.
But that's gonna give you details on how FPAs
may utilize our automated API system
to communicate with G-Invoicing.
The last bullet there is Alex Abshire in conjunction with
the law of agencies has published a new 7600 A & B Forms.
7600 A, GT&C, B is your orders.
So we've got those synced up now with G-Invoicing
and we've got new forms out there.
Hopefully in the future you guys aren't using those forms
because we're capturing the same information in G-Invoicing.
There's really no reason to print those off
but we had that functionality out there for you.
So the third prong, data standardization.
That way we all speak the same language
and we can communication with Chewbacca there.
The FIDS is our answer to that.
So in April of 19, we published FIDS that took you from GNT,
GT&C orders, performance through remittance.
I'm not saying we're not making up dates to this
'cause we are.
We're getting feedback on those
and we're incorporating changes as necessary
but the FIDS are out there and available to you
and if you go to the G-Invoicing website
you're gonna see the latest version of those.
One thing we hear on the FIDS from a few folks is,
"OMB, are you guys in alignment with OMB?"
And we recognize that need
so when you talk buy/sell, there is a component of buy/sell,
assisted acquisitions.
OMB released a memo I believe 12 years ago
basically saying for IGT business rules,
"Hey, go to Treasury, go the 4700."
But there is still a small piece in assisted acquisitions
where you have dual guidance.
You had the FAR and you still had the TFM
so we put together a working group
and as you can see up there,
some of the agencies are participating.
We've met about eight times at this point
going through and making sure,
aligning Treasury guidance and OMB guidance.
I will tell you they've been great partners
and they have been in past endeavors.
It's not uncommon for Treasury and OMB to partner up on
several things based on my experience.
We have strong relationships with OMB when it comes to
GTAS and USGL guidance.
It's not uncommon for Treasury and OMB to get together,
come to an agreement and they're great to work with
because we all had the same end goal in mind.
We wanna get good, accurate data
that agencies can use and use effectively.
I will say based on those conversations,
don't let that hold you up.
In the eight meetings I've been in, and this is my opinion,
there hasn't been any showstoppers.
So as we're aligning this,
I think you're gonna possibly see, possibly,
I emphasize possibly,
some minor changes to the FIDS
but none of substantial value thus far
and you could see some minor changes.
I hope to see some minor changes in the FAR.
That way, we get guidance from OMB and Treasury
in alignment.
So that's the battle plan that we're gonna use
to combat the $21 billion in differences
and implement G-Invoicing, again from a system perspective.
We're doing very well on that.
Policy, we keep implementing policy
and I think we've got some really great guidance
out there for you guys
and here's the data standards for the language
we're gonna be talking about.
So that's the battle plan
and I think Keith's gonna get up here
and tell you how you can get on the same team as us.
-: Thanks, Chris.
So there you go.
We're nearing full capacity.
Just a couple more months we're gonna have capability
to go end to end.
At least within the system
we know there's a lot of work to do on the ERP side.
The next step is for you all.
We need you to join this process
to get your business processes aligned, transitioned,
converted over.
We need you on this collaboration.
Are you with us?
That's pretty lame, come on.
Are you with us?
(audience cheers)
All right.
Shoo.
Don't make me drop another mandate.
I'm just kidding.
(laughs)
All right, a little bit of a lukewarm response.
Let me see if I can maybe use some peer pressure
to try and get you plugged in as to what's going on here.
Your peers in the trading partner world,
many of them are extremely active with us.
Chris touched on a couple of these.
These are some groups that we have,
some platforms that you can step in
and begin to be part of this collaboration.
We've got a couple of things out there that we run.
One is the ITWG.
I forgot to ask Alex before I jumped up here
but I think we were creeping up on 2,000 people
that are registered for our blast out related to the ITWG.
They don't all join the calls.
I know sometimes it sounds like that.
We do back the truck up and give you a lot of information
in those sessions and really pour it out on you.
That's where we navigate through the functional,
the technical side of the program.
That's where the FIDS was and will continue to be developed.
There's a lot of things that go on in that working group
so encourage you as an option to step in
and understand what your peers are doing
as well as to bring your concerns to the table.
You'll hear me say it a couple times today.
If you have a concern about one of your transactions,
there's at least one other person that has that concern.
It's the trading partner
that you're doing that business with, so bring it.
Bring it to the group and let's chat about it.
The other side of that
is the Financial Management Standards Committee.
The fiscal service G-Invoicing program chairs the ITWG.
The FMSC is also chaired by fiscal
but it's run through our FID organization.
There's a broad spectrum here of things that the FMSC covers
but specific to G-Invoicing,
there are subgroups that are part of this working group
that are aligned to each of the key vendors
in the space here
so there's a CGI, there's an Oracle,
there's an SAP sub working group
and even below that there's some specific
G-Invoicing subgroups.
So that's the place where the communication
is wrapping around what's going on
from the ERP vendor offering.
In terms of understanding what your ERP provider is up to,
the latest and greatest news on what they're offering
looks like, their timelines, things that they need,
things that they're considering,
that's the avenue you need to go through.
We're gonna put some information out there
that can steer you towards that.
We can certainly give you Treasury's perspective
on what we take away from those
but the latest and greatest is right through that program.
They all have a very regular cadence of meetings
and there's good POCs that are running those
from both the government side
as well as the vendor side to help you there.
There's links here on these.
There's also information out at our tables out front
that can get you into these.
A lot of things going on in the broad spectrum platform
as far as places that you can engage.
Coming in a little more closer to home
in terms of getting your rebellion
or your collaboration efforts up, as I call it,
are some things that we've done on the program
to help guide you there.
We put together a G-Invoicing playbook
to steer you down the path,
using some success stories that we've seen
from some of your peers in this business line.
So, over on the right you see the steps
that are outlined in the playbook.
I'm not gonna go through each of these
but it really involves pulling together a cross-cutting team
within your organization,
taking a look at your processes, your data,
really understanding what's there,
if there's any gaps between that and the FIDS,
working with your provider or your system development folks,
understanding what's gonna be needed
from a system perspective and then navigating through
the testing process of that.
These are steps that you can or may choose not to take.
They're not prescribed.
You do not have to do these things.
This is merely a reference.
We've seen it be successful across some of your peers,
DoD, GSA, DoJ,
some organizations that have really followed this model
and we've seen some good success there.
But we recognize that every organization's different.
You each have your own mission.
You have your own challenges, you have your own pace,
you have your own things that you're dealing with
in this space.
Certainly a guide, certainly a tool and a reference,
but by no means a policy that you absolutely have to follow.
Over on the left you see some information related to
what our program team does to support you along the way
on this, so things like individual focus meetings,
getting in there, helping you with demos and some training
and walking you through some of those things.
That's what our program team is really meant to do
to bring this back and make it a little closer to home
versus some of the broader spectrum work groups we have.
So that coupled with the playbook there
are some things that you can be doing on a smaller scale
within your own organization.
Diving a little bit deeper even into the stuff that we do
from a program perspective to help you,
we have what we call an agency implementation team
within the G-Invoicing program so every organization,
once you take that step off the fence,
when you get off that lukewarm response
that you're ready to go,
we're gonna assign you a dedicated resource
from our program team that's gonna be there
to assist you along the way.
You're not on your own.
We're gonna help you.
That resource is gonna be there to help you with education,
to really dive a little bit deeper
than the initial discussions that we'll have
at a broader program level,
really get in there,
understand the inner workings
of what you're doing in your organization,
be a conduit back and forth to the program
to bring your challenges to us,
help you with training, help you with education,
help you with setting up your account
and even all the way through to even some production support
as we've gotten some folks into that space already.
A lot of good things that go on with the AIT and the program
and you see we spiral this down.
We start big, at a galactic level, if you will,
and we take it all the way down to your home base,
really trying to help you in a variety of ways.
So as we go through that process, we learn a lot.
We hear things from our resources, our AIT members,
we hear things through the ITWG, we hear things
as we're out having focus group discussions.
We know that there's some things out there
that are challenging you.
We heard a lot of those in the implementation plans
that just came in at the end of June.
I wanna pause here for a second
and just from a personal perspective
and on behalf of our team, thank you.
Thank you to each of you
who played a role in either doing it completely
and/or being a participant in your organization's creation
of your implementation plan.
That was by no means a small effort.
We recognize a lot of things with this program are not easy.
This is a lot of change, and that implementation plan
was a big step forward.
We had, I think, nearly an 80% response rate
the first time out, getting those plans in.
That's phenomenal for across the government.
Round of applause to yourselves for doing that.
Yeah.
(audience applauds)
We greatly appreciate what you did.
It was an 80% response rate.
Some organizations sent in more than one plan
depending on how they divide themselves
and I think we got over 100 plans.
Wanna tell you that they've all been read.
Are we gonna talk about every challenge they across
in this session and the one later today?
No.
We got some general themes there.
So please don't jump to the mic
and ask for an immediate response on a demand
that you have in your plan.
We're not gonna have that for you today.
We have carved out the consistent asks
and even some of the specific asks
that came out of those plans.
We've assembled those into documents.
It's working its way through our leadership core
so they can better understand
the challenges and the forces that are facing you
out there as you navigate through this.
Thank you for the plans.
Thank you for the information.
There's quarterly updates due on those
so if you haven't submitted one, you can still get it to us
but we do need a regular update on a quarterly basis
as to where you're at
and what's going on with your implementation path forward
and the new challenges that you find
as you dig into this and you begin to peel it back,
you're gonna find new things
and we wanna know about it
either through one of those groups that I mentioned,
through the individual sessions with your AIT,
and definitely in your plan documented with some good data
behind it so that we can see what that means.
Okay, so the forces that are challenging us.
Put a couple of them up here.
These are just some things,
I think you may have actually seen these
on some of the slides.
We've been kicking some of these things around
for the last few months in terms of challenges.
You heard me talk about Vendor, Chris talk about Vendor.
We did get some information related back about,
there's challenge with the vendors and the timelines
that are associated there.
We appreciate that.
We're pushing extremely hard on the vendors,
leaning on them to get their solution decisions
and their path forward.
I know I can at least say comfortably
that they are all going to have a solution now
that's going to support your needs in some capacity
and that will be available prior to the mandate.
It does vary depending upon the vendor.
It does vary in terms of timing
and it does vary in terms of scope
and in terms of what they're going to be doing.
Those are the things that you need to go through
those FMSE subgroups
and really have those conversations to understand.
What we're learning is there's not a lot of consistent
implementations of even the same vendor product
across agencies, so that does present a challenge.
We'll do our past to continue to help support that,
cooperate with the vendors,
pressure them a little bit to make sure that they're being
as aggressive as they can in terms of what they're doing.
A lot of requests about implementation timelines
for your peers.
That's certainly information that we got in
in some capacity in the plans.
We're gonna look to some of the statistics
that we'll put out there through our website
related to that.
There is a notion that we may or may not.
We're still working through whether that's gonna be
something that we do as far as sharing
the full, complete plan on our OMB Max website.
But one thing I would encourage you to do,
and I know from reading some of the plans
that many of you did it,
is just call your trading partner and,
"Hey, can I see your plan?"
There's nothing that says you can't do that.
There's no reason you can't share your plans.
We saw a lot of cut and paste paragraphs
across organizations when we read the plan
so we know some of you shared your plans
while you were creating them.
(audience laughs)
Which is good.
You're collaborating.
That's what we want you to do.
Would you have been doing that two years ago?
No.
So this is good.
These are all good things.
And then, what if you know if you're just gonna miss?
The first executive touchpoint that our leadership had,
I won't name the agency.
The first thing that came out
was they put their hand on the table and said,
"We're not gonna make it, is that a problem?"
We know that that's gonna happen in many, many cases.
We're pushing hard.
Does that mean we're moving the mandate date?
No.
You heard some of the things we're doing as far as
scorecarding.
We have yet to figure out what we're gonna be doing
in terms of enforcement.
There's a lot to do
in the two years that we had before that mandate.
We recognize that, so be honest.
Tell us what you're gonna meet for,
tell us what you're not gonna meet for.
If you're not going to meet,
don't just say you're not going to meet.
Don't just give us a TBD.
Tell us why.
Put some data behind it.
Give us some information.
We need to know that so we can work with you.
Into accounting, we do get this question,
what's in, what's out.
That's a common theme.
"I'm not sure if this is something I should be running
"through G-Invoicing or not."
We've struggled with that on the program to some extent.
I know we have a session on that later today
to talk about it from the program guide perspective
in terms of how you do the accounting.
One thing that we found recently that helps
is just flip it upside down.
What we look at when we calculate the differences,
these three reciprocal categories, 22, 23, 24,
so as you're doing what's prescribed in the playbook
and what you should be doing as part of your implementation
in terms of navigating through your business process,
follow those transactions through
until you get to that person's desk or that process
or that system where the classification
in the reciprocal categories happens
and see if that transaction falls into one of those three.
If it does, more than likely it's in scope.
If you can't figure that out, let us know.
Bring it to the work group.
Somebody else probably shares that challenge.
As I said before, definitely put it in your plan.
Let us know on your quarterly update
that you're coming across this activity
and you wanna know what should be done there.
So those are things.
There's definitely a lot of outlets for you to
exercise raising that to us.
What if you just do a lot?
We've got a lot of questions about,
"We got a lot of transactions,
"we don't necessarily know what we need to do
"as far as things that are,"
as we call them, in flight,
which is appropriate I guess,
since we're talking about space and Star Wars here.
So there's a lot of things that are gonna be in process.
"What we do there?"
That's a common ask that came across in the plans.
Don't have a decision that yet
but I will tell you is, don't just say you have a lot.
Tell us what a lot is.
Put some data to it.
A few agencies did that.
IRS, who else?
I think it was DOI, HHS maybe,
put some very good work around
what that activity looks like,
what that data looks like at our mandate point
in the midyear.
So we have some good perspective
on what that data looks like.
That's what we need.
We need to understand what that data looks like
and doing that just means that you're digging into the work
and the process in the data in your organization
and you're gonna better understand what it means
to get that converted into the system.
So definitely let us know what that looks like.
You see a bullet in the middle there.
I probably should have highlighted that
and made it its own slide and that is
if you're struggling with what to convert, where to start,
look to your own activity.
If we look across the landscape of our trading partner
world out there in IPAC, invariably,
one of the top five trading partners for every organization
is actually itself.
So that's a great place to start.
You control both sides of the transaction there.
We know we've got a dance going on here
where you gotta have your trading partner there
in order to broker this activity in the system.
But if it's your activity with yourself
across bureau lines or office lines or business lines,
you control both sides.
You can stand your account up,
you can get your access created
and you can actually begin to dip your toe in the pool,
as I say, and actually learn from that process
and begin to step into it.
So it's a great place to start.
We definitely encourage that.
Circle the wagons, look at your own stuff first.
That's gonna flesh out a lot of the problems
and the challenges that you're gonna have.
If you're in this session maybe
and you just thought it looked cool with the Star Wars thing
and didn't really know what G-Invoicing was,
we've got help there too.
We can help you.
We got stuff out at our booth, we got an incredible website
that's got a lot of information and a lot of resources
so there's a lot of avenues to go through
to get yourself started.
Once you make the commitment, we'll get you an AIT resource
and you'll be on your way.
So a lot of forces, we recognize that.
This is not easy.
Not gonna stand here and lie
that this is an easy thing to do.
If it was easy, it would've done by now.
Okay, so peaceful negotiations as I said,
I got a light saber, I think.
This thing's green so I'm the only one
maybe in the room with at least a beam.
We'll have a couple minutes to take a few questions
before we jump back in to the closure of the slides
and really, I put a couple things here,
really questions for us to you,
not things that we want you guys to answer
but just things to think about.
Have you submitted your plan?
I talked about the importance of the plan.
If you haven't, why not?
Was there a challenge there that you had
that prevented you from being able to get that plan to us?
That's something we definitely wanna work on,
work with you on.
Are you looking at change management?
Are you looking at discussions with your ERP providers?
Have you secured funding?
That's a dangerous topic to bring up, I know,
but it's an important topic.
There's resources that are gonna be needed
to enact these changes so we definitely wanna know
whether you've had a conversation with your ERP provider
maybe thinking about it from a budget perspective
in terms of what you're doing on dollars.
Are you guys communicating amongst each other?
I know you shared some plans, trying to cheat a little bit,
maybe,
"What answer did you get for this to get this thing done
"so I can get it to Treasury and not be in trouble?"
But we want you to communicate.
That's important, so are you doing that?
Are you starting to have those conversations?
And I can tell you that we're really seeing that.
As we go out,
GSA is having some discussions later this week,
they're inviting a lot of their trading partners in.
It's surprising now sometimes when I walk into a meeting
and I've got reps from another agency
that I didn't expect to be there
but that's a significant trading partner for them.
That's great to see.
People are bringing their vendors into the conversation.
This is where we want to evolve to.
We've come a long way in the few years
that the program's been running.
It's great to see these things.
I see two guys at the mic.
I don't know if you guys are mic runners
or question holders.
Man: Runners.
-: Runners, I like runners 'cause they don't beat me up
and whip out a light saber on me.
All right, I'm sure you have questions but again,
if you guys remember, we typically do IGT Day in April.
This year we decided to merge it with the conference
to give you a two-for-one sort of deal
but we do have a path of conversations today
that navigate through some of the key topics,
talking about what we've done with orders,
getting into performance later in the day,
we've got activity related to the plans,
we've got things related to the accounting side,
the program guide.
A lot of good information
that's gonna come in some of these sessions
and I know we're competing against two other rooms
and you can't always be in three places at once
so, certainly encourage you to follow the path
and if you can't, all that information, of course,
will be out on the website.
A lot of information back at our table
and also through our various program team that's here
today in terms of questions.
We fielded a few already.
I was joking this morning, I ran a G-Invoicing program
on the metro car this morning.
Sometimes I actually see people in there and they ask me
questions on the metro about G-Invoicing.
It's always kind of fun.
(laughing)
Anyway, I don't see anybody running to the mic.
Upper deck, I know you don't have mics.
It's hard to see up there.
It's really, really bright up here but we'll go forward.
I know there's gonna be questions
as we go later on in the day.
Just wanted to close out the session,
maybe give you a couple minutes back
and a bathroom break before the next one.
The solution does await out there.
We've got a lot of things that we're doing.
Chris hit those three prongs.
Those three prongs, they're gonna continue to be worked on.
We're gonna continue to evolve the system.
We're gonna continue to work on that data standard
as a result of conversations that are happening
both with some of our bigger legislative bodies
as well as through the various platforms
that we've covered today.
We're also gonna be looking at
fully in that data standard and making sure it's suiting
the process that we need.
As we get folks into the system,
brokering activity, we're gonna learn.
You're gonna learn, we're gonna learn.
There's gonna be refinements.
So the concept of us being done with this
in a couple of months or your vendor being done with it
or us being done with the data standard,
that's really not a reality in the federal space,
in the world in general.
Who woke up this morning to a red dot on their phone
from one of their apps?
They don't stay static.
They're constantly being updated,
so we're no different in terms of what we're doing
with this program and this initiative.
Black holes, so on the space theme,
we know we've got something out there
that we need to navigate.
A lot of business processes that we need to accommodate.
Not everybody does things the same way.
If you did, we wouldn't have a difference.
A lot of different missions out there
in terms of your organization.
It's very interesting to learn how
everybody's evolved their way into IGT buy/sell
over the years and the way that they accommodate the process
and the things that they do.
Not to say anything's right or wrong.
It's just that we've got some things and some challenges
that we need to get reconciled
and get on the same page with.
Definitely got some things going on with the ERP community.
We recognize that.
We know that there's a lot of work to be done
in that vendor space in as far as the onboarding
and there's a lot of discussion going on
through those FMSE subgroups,
a lot of things that we're trying to steer, as I said,
from fiscal service to make sure we're keeping those guys
on good footing and moving forward
in terms of providing support for you.
And really just overall, it's the scale of the initiative.
Chris hit on the stats here.
It's 700 ALC,
$780 billion worth of activity.
That is nothing something that you just flip a switch
on Friday or Saturday and come back Monday
and you're doing something new,
not to mention the fact that this is
a very different initiative compared to many of the things
that you've worked with in fiscal service in the past
where it's your information and your reporting
and you scoop it up and you throw it over the fence to us.
Now it's a dance between you and your trading partner
getting on the same page and making sure
that you're doing things through this common broker.
That's a big challenge but it's where we need to be.
We're a social world and it's all about social network
and social media and we gotta be social in our IGT buy/sell.
Definitely a lot of collaboration and a lot of work
that needs to be done in that space.
Is it gonna be easy?
Nope.
It's change.
If you came to AGA, that was the whole theme.
It's change through standardization
was our AGA presentation theme and no one likes change.
We don't like change in the government.
We recognize that.
Nobody jumps and gets excited on change
unless they've got a really big pain point with this,
which we do here at Treasury, which is why we're changing.
But the end game is improved consistency,
I mean, improved communication.
I guess I should say effective communication, right Leah?
So improved effective communication,
improved accountability, improved transparency.
That's what we're after with this initiative.
Closing out here, we got our collaboration forces.
I am Han, I'm the oldest dude here so I get to claim him,
Wes looks a lot like Luke.
Chris, that does not make you Princess Leia.
(audience laughs)
I'm gonna say you're probably Chewbacca.
If you wanna mess with our program, you gotta mess with him.
We've probably got a couple Leias.
Leia was the smart one, right?
She was the one, she was the brains of the bunch.
We got Jamie, we got Jen, we got our Princess Leias here.
That's how you can get in touch with us.
A lot of links in the deck, I know,
but hopefully you know how to get to our website
and get the information.
Just trying to have some fun with that.
All right, so I go back to our old buddy Yoda here,
who is really old.
Maybe he's the oldest guy.
What was he 900 years old?
I can't remember.
Something like that, pretty old.
But he had a little wisdom here,
so I'm gonna channel my inner Yoda here
and try and leave you with something you can maybe think
about for the rest of the day as you go through.
So Yoda says, this is a quote that I dug around
and my daughter confirmed that it was a real quote, I think,
"If no mistake you have made,
"yet losing you are, a different game you should play."
so I'm not going to stand here and say that IGT buy/sell
is a game.
This is not a game.
But individually, we all approach it with that same passion,
that same competitive spirit as if it is a game.
We wanna ensure that we get our collections,
that our books balance,
that our financial statements are good,
that our auditors are happy.
Individually,
we wanna make sure that we have that clean opinion.
On an individual basis, we're doing that.
Individually, we're winning.
But if you take a step back and you collectively look
at how we process this activity
and how we're settling it out
on a government-wide level, we're losing.
We're losing to the tune of $21 billion last year
and a number that's already approaching that this year
as you saw in the last presentation.
So something's gotta change.
We gotta play the game differently.
We gotta do something different.
It's not gonna be easy.
We know that.
There's a lot of work to do.
But we'll get there.
We will get there.
So thank you.
(audience applauds)