(upbeat music)
-: So, it's nice to see everyone here
at eight o'clock in the morning.
I'm not a morning person, so being able to see that
many people make it by eight o'clock, it's nice.
I'm Tim Griffin, I'm the Commissioner of the Bureau
of the Fiscal Service and I'm the new Commissioner
I've been in the job for three months now
I thought I'd start by giving a little bit about me
and my vision for the Fiscal Service and then
I'll start into our panel this morning.
So, I was prior to coming to Treasury, I was the CFO
and the Associate Administrator for Performance Management
at the Small Business Administration, so I bring with me
and and I started at SBA over 10 years ago as the Director
of performance and then I became the deputy CFO
and then finally, the CFO.
So as I look at the interactions over the years
that I had had with Treasury or that my staff had had
with Treasury, it was always I was always impressed
by the level of professionalism the customer orientation
that people in the bureau have and so for me
coming into the Fiscal Service, I'm coming in as an outsider
because I hadn't come from Treasury like prior commissioners
and so that was partly drinking from the fire hose
as you can imagine the very beginning.
There's the things that I was familiar with
but then there's a lot of things
that Treasury did that I was not familiar with.
So, I spent the last three months really trying
to get my feet wet, I visited all of the our sites
we have seven locations around the country
and having briefings on all the things that we've done
and that we are planning to do and that's
what a little bit about today's panel is about
just to give you a glimpse on some of those things.
So yesterday morning when Dave Lebryk opened up
and he was talking about the vision for Financial Management
as we move forward over the next several years
and that falls into, that vision falls into kind
of these four pillars of what we're gonna do
with disbursements, collections, reporting
and I was gonna say shared services but it's really
more services expanding services whether it's centralized
or shared and we're gonna get a little bit into that
to give a teaser on some of the sessions that are
gonna be presented today on those four pillars.
So, also when we release the vision
I guess was two years ago and then had 10 initiatives
on what we wanted to accomplish, we already did one of them,
one of the big is we mapped the ten initiatives
to the four pillars and one of them
was making government financing more transparent because as
we all know it's really confusing, so I mean
I looked at it SBA was an organization I had
all of the government type financial assistance devices
but the financial statements, unless
you're really understood loan
and County meant nothing to you.
So we were trying to do something that made
our government finances more accessible
to the American people and that was accomplished through
and he mentioned this, it was originally called
the Citizen's Guide but it is Your Guide
to America's Finances and if you haven't been there yet
I do recommend that you look at it
when you talk about something that's a human centered design
like Dave talked about yesterday, that site really is
it's easy to navigate, it's easy to try to figure out
and go and understand the finances
of the American government from collections
to what's being dispersed by program and by agency
so I encourage you to look at that, so that we check the box
and so you'd say, well and that means that we have nine now.
No, that's not how it works, so especially
in the performance world, that I'm used to
it's like you've got to sign up for more
so we have 12 and there are three initiatives
on each of these four pillars.
Now one of the things that I do as part of my role
as the Commissioner is a when I lay out that vision
and I'm just gonna show you this little visual aid
and this is a what we're going to accomplish
over the next year and this outlines those 12 initiatives
and you can find it on our website
at FMVision@fiscal.treasury.gov.
And this I sent out two weeks ago, I think it was
on August, 1st to the CFO Community to say,
here's what we plan to accomplish and as part of my goal
as the Commissioner is, there's also doing a lot
more agency outreach and I one of the things
I found in my role as the CFO at SBA was
I didn't necessarily see how everything came together
and I wasn't necessarily aware at my level of everything
that Treasury offered, in fact it was at a meeting
that John came to me to talk about Treasury's vision
that I even found out about the central receivables service.
I didn't realize that Treasury offered that and I'm thinking
I could go to Treasury to have them work on my collections
and I don't have to have people within the agency doing that
and answer was yes, so that's an example of something
that Fiscal Service offers that I wasn't even aware of
and so I'm embarking on a Meet and Greet with all of
the CFO Community to meet with the CFOs, the deputy CFOs
to find out what are some of the things that they need
that we could help provide 'cause when we talk about
the financial management vision of the future
it's that in the CFO world that we should be focused more
on the analytics and less on the transactions
and Treasury's here to help do the transactions
to free you up to do more of the policy, looking at
what what does it mean to account for things
how we account for things different ways
when we talk about intergovernmental differences.
As a CFO that was one of the things
that really frustrated me that I counted
for transactions one way and my training partner accounted
for it in a different way and then that caused
in a governmental difference that then was counted twice
and it's the way it works, I understand it but
it's something that, it gets frustrating
so there's a lot of solutions that Treasury
has to help combat that with the invoicing.
So, that's a little bit about me
I come with a background of performance,
financial management and evaluation and that's what I did
at SBA bringing those disciplines together
in the CFO's office using data for information
to help make the informed decisions
and that's what I plan to do in my role here
at the Bureau is bringing those disciplines together
so that we are providing better services to you.
So when we talk about customer orientation
you are our customers as well as your customers
are our customers 'cause we touch all the citizens
and so we wanna make sure that we're meeting your needs
as well and I'll put another plug in, we're gonna
be sending out a survey in the next few weeks or a month
our own customer satisfaction survey
that will be sending out and what
we interested in hearing from you.
So with that, with on the panel today
I have four my distinguished colleagues
and we're going to talk about, you hear two common themes,
one when we talk about customers and what does that mean
and the other one is, what are some of the things
that we are doing to modernize 'cause we're not just staying
in place, we're looking at how can we do things better
and more efficiently, more effectively.
So first is John Hill, John Hill is filling in
for the Assistant Commissioner
for I'm trying to think,
payment management and so the titles were still living new
to me but so because the Rhonda who
is the Assistant Commissioner decided that would be fun
to go on a cruise instead of attending training like this.
So John was kind enough to fill in for her
and he's gonna talk about a lot of the things
that they're doing in Payment Management
to make it more modern and then next to John
is Corvelli McDaniel and he's the Assistant Commissioner
of Collections and he is going to talk about all the things
that they've been doing in collections
like the digital wallet and a lot of a modern technology
the way that people today want to interact
with Payment Management that's what Corvelli's
been working on and then next to him is Mike Linder
he's the Assistant Commissioner for Fiscal Accounting
we saw him yesterday as well and he's going to talk about
a lot of what we're doing to strengthen reporting
and making the government finances more transparent
and accessible and then finally but not least, next to him
is Gavin Jackson and Gavin is going to talk about
the different services that we provide
when I talk about expanding services from a central
and a shared perspective that's what he's gonna discuss.
So and make sure I can get this to work.
There we go.
So, but first, I would be interested
on the Senate a polling question, so I'm curious
on what your interests are, so if you can do with the show
of hands, I'm curious to know how many of you are interested
in learning more about Optimizing Disbursense?
Okay, we have a couple people, how about
in Transforming Collections?
Yep, okay few more and then strengthening reporting?
(laughing)
A lot of--- -: No pressure.
-: I'm with you on that one.
(audience laughing)
And how about on Expanding Shared Services?
Okay.
So, we'll have a little bit for each of you
so there's a good thing that we have all four
because I could see that everyone's interested
in different parts of this but there's definitely
a lot of pressure on Mike as we talk
about strengths and reporting.
So with that, I will start with when we talk
about optimizing dispersing activities
that's something that as the CFO at SBA was always vital
to me because as we were trying to deliver our programs
we wanted to make sure that the money was getting
in the hands of the recipients as soon as possible,
especially, when we talk about some of our loan programs
and we had commitments of how fast we wanted that money out
so as we talked about optimizing disbursements
I'll turn it to John to discuss some of the things that
we have in the works for you.
John: Good morning everyone?
-: [Audience Members] Good morning.
-: What I'd like to talk about, when we talked
about dispersing cause I'm not the Assistant Commissioner
I wanna present from a different perspective
and I'm gonna start with a story about hurricanes.
Two years ago this month, Hurricane Harvey made landfall
on the Gulf Coast of Texas, in one four-day period
this category four storm dropped over 60 inches of rain
on the Houston area, it inflicted 125 billion dollars
of damage making it one of the most destructive,
natural disasters in American history
tied only with Hurricane Katrina.
Now you might remember Hurricane Katrina occurred
also in August, 12 years before Harvey.
It also inflicted 125 billion dollars of damage
and displaced thousands of Americans from their homes.
Now I bring up these two horrific events,
one in 2005 and one in 2017 to illustrate
how our nation's disbursing system has evolved
over the past 15 years.
Together these two events are a perfect before
and after picture of how the dispersing system
has become more resilient, more reliable and more efficient
in a relatively short period of time, about 12 years.
Let me present some numbers, during Katrina it is estimated
between five and 10,000 Americans did not receive
their Social Security payments on time and for some
the delay was weeks, these are very rough estimates
I say them with a lot of caution, we were organized
very differently back then, it's very hard to assemble
the data but the fact remains, a natural disaster,
greatly impaired the government's ability
to make lifeline payments during a time and to a group
of people most affected that disaster, that was 2005.
Now let me jump ahead to tell
the second chapter of the story.
12 years later, 2017 Harvey.
Now here we've got good records from what I can gather,
less than 100 Americans failed to receive
their Social Security payments, why?
Well, I think we know the answers right?
Direct Deposit, 95% of Social Security recipients
and other recipients use Direct Deposit
and the Direct Express card which provides
a convenient banking option for the unbanked.
Now, I hope this story sort of makes you as optimistic
about the future as I am, it's a story
of how federal employees, all of us in this room
have transformed a system, a very large system
that makes payments to over 100 million Americans
we applied existing technology and applied it very well
did in a relatively short period of time,
improve the reliability of the system and in the process
actually saved a lot of money, saved about a billion dollars
over the over the last couple of years.
So I'm confident that we can transform the disbursing system
again over the next five to 10 years
just as we've done it in the past five to 10 years
and we're working towards two big goals
and I'd like to sort of talk about them now.
The first is to make payments faster
to make funds availability in on the same day
or in close to real-time and secondly
to reduce improper payments and I encourage you
to attend four panels that will address these two goals
over the next few days.
(clears voice)
At two o'clock today there's a panel,
appropriately called faster payments, I encourage you
to attend that and learn how we are piloting
a number of new technologies both same-day ACH
and some mobile payment options
with various Federal Agencies and if you can hang
in there until three o'clock tomorrow
there's a session called Digital Pay and there you can learn
how using our Instant issue Debit Card
with some mobile payment features, so a good session today
at 2:00 and tomorrow 3:00.
Now, both of these panels will discuss payment options
that will enable funds availability
either same-day or real-time.
Now to reduce improper payments the second goal
we're aiming toward we really
have two panel presentations ahead,
one is on the Payment Integrity Center of Excellence
and that's how we're making a huge amount
of post payment data available to agencies
so they can identify potential patterns of improper payment
or misdirected funds and then also another presentation
on the Do Not Payment Business Center that
at 11 o'clock today in the Hemisphere room.
So, before I turn it over to Corvelli, let me just say
that very often history repeats itself.
The two innovations that enable us now
to make payments reliably on time, every time,
despite category four and category five Hurricanes
those two innovations started very small.
There was a time when Direct Express was only used
by one agency, there was a time
when Direct Express only touched about 100 recipients
and now it is used by five million Americans
so in the next two days, please learn all you can
about faster payments and about Payment Integrity
'cause I think they're gonna shape the future
of the payments plans.
-: So then when you talk about after after payments
the next thing we talked about is Collections
and when John talks about disaster
I think back to my SBA days where SBA
is a large direct lender to disaster survivors
and in the olden days, we were having to account
for a ton of paper checks that were coming in
from the borrowers and we used Treasury to help transform
what we were doing by using pay.gov and converting people
from checks over to electronic, so I'm now gonna turn
it over to Corvelli who's gonna talk about other things
that he's doing to transform collections.
-: Yes thank you Tim and Peter Cove is still alive and well
I hope that's well known in this audience, certainly hope so
and still a serving agencies well.
You know there was a standard phrase I learned
as a young army officer, move, shoot, communicate.
Three essential capabilities to develop build
and actually perfect to have success in battle.
This phrase has its applicability beyond the military
the nature of the customer experience
and the customer expectation now, is that customers
can transact business on the move.
In their car, the train, at the airport
and from any location they are at.
Move, shoot, communicate translated in business terms
could be engage, sale, service, probably a comparison talk
for another time but the point is we must offer solutions
that align with customers who are on the move.
Our mobile app products are such a solution
and they're having a positive impact on agencies
and on citizens around the world.
If you want an example, I invite you in your minds
to travel with me about 4900 miles west
to Hawaii, County Hawaii specifically
the US Fish and Wildlife Service,
Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.
The referee draws about 1000 visitors each day
but due to its rural location, the only payment option
to customers for a long time was cash.
So picture this, customers would drive to the refuge,
wait in line to park and after they parked
they'd wait in line to buy a pass and once they got
to the cashier and realized that only cash was accepted
they had two or three rather unpleasant decisions to make.
Do I give up my parking spot and drive to an ATM
a couple of miles down the road, get the cash and return
or do I leave in frustration?
The Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge affords customers
the chance to do dolphin watching, to see monk seals
in their habitat, you can do things like visit
the historic Kilauea Point Lighthouse that was built
over 100 years ago in 1913, breathtaking views,
hiking Crater Hill, a mola weeka Point
who would want to miss all that action?
(audience laughing)
Just because the government
had limited payment options, who would wanna miss it?
I know I wouldn't, US Fish and Wildlife said
how can we radically change this customer experience
they've partnered with the Fiscal Service and in October
of 2018, I piloted our Fed Rev Collect mobile app.
Kilauea refuge now accepts card transactions
through a mobile point-of-sale.
Revenue has increased 49% since October of 2018,
annual past sales are up.
Now this is a rural remote operational setting
and challenges with implementing our mobile app
we had them and it points to the fact that
our services or our solutions whether
they be systems services products they must be deployed
in many geographical circumstances and we have
to contend with a lot of challenges when we deploy
these solutions, network topography issues,
bandwidth constraints, PC settings, settings from one PC
to the other can make a world of difference,
antivirus protection challenges, some things work better
with McAfee verses Symantec and so,
the Fish and Wildlife Service and the leadership
of Kilauea Point refuge they found a way
and now customers have the option of paying by card
and the entire experience has been transformed
that ability to be mobile and present customers
with alternatives, it made a difference in this case
and I think the Fish and Wildlife Service
has done a really good job here.
You know, I would point to another example
just in the spirit of storytelling, since John
you started it, you escorts.
Again, another organization that is implemented one
of our mobile app products but they implemented
the mobile app for check capture and there
are now 28 US courts just a combination
of district courts and bankruptcy courts
that are doing mobile check capture
which was an ideal solution
for their particular business need,
customers required to pay a court filing fees
or restitution or something of that nature and present
a check, well the agency has a solution that
they're pleased with to address low volume check activity
and so much so, now they I have to say that they
I'm pointing them out because they're kind
of a great use case in terms of Division Treasury
has four mobile app products right, we want agencies
to pilot, so you can see the benefits for yourselves
but then ultimately, we envision deep adoption
a widespread implementation and the US court seems
to be one of those agencies that began
with three courts piloting the mobile app
for check capture, they liked it, the word spread
the leadership also put their weight behind it
and today 28 courts and within the next week or so
the administrative office of the US courts
which centrally manages all of the financial activity
they are going out with a letter to all district
in bankruptcy courts, over 180 of them,
encouraging them to use the Check Capture App
what the benefits are et cetera and they anticipate
the court to do even broader adoption of that product.
So we have two situations here,
Kilauea Point National Refuge and the US Courts.
One organization needed a solution that dealt
with offering more in terms of card our alternatives
and we had an app for that, with the US Courts
they needed a solution that dealt with checks and being able
to process those checks quickly and efficiently
we had an app for that and so, I think the point
that I'll leave with is you know, we must have solutions
that meet the needs of agencies whatever that need may be
this is dynamic, it is fluid and we have
to have solutions depending on what the agency is trying
to accomplish that meet those needs.
So someone just held up a sign and I think that's my cue to.
(audience laughing)
Pack it in, she wasn't even discreet about it
she held it up real high.
(audience laughing)
Everybody could see.
(audience laughing)
So I'm gonna stop.
(audience laughing)
And turn it over to my colleague Mike Linder
I think if there was a title of Chief Accountant
for the government it would have to be Mike Lender
because of his role and responsibilities in government
and he does it exceptionally well,
so Mike over to you.
-: Thank you.
Thank You Corvelli, so three things before I get started
I'm sure I'll grieve over my time but I'll try not to.
One is, I'm ready to go to Kilauea Point.
(audience laughing)
(chattering)
Two is, thank you all for raising your hands
at the beginning to make me feel good, so I appreciate that.
And three is I've got a couple of stories
but they're definitely not gonna give you the imagery
that John and Corvelli done so far.
So, Tim mentioned there at the beginning that
about intergovernmental differences and though
as a community we've made a lot of progress and so
if you think about the financial report, the US government
and one of those impediments to audit ability
is Intergovernmental eliminations, you think about all
the progress we've made but yet we've got a few miles to go
and one of those areas would be in the example he gave
is by some area, so as a fiscal 18
we still had 21 billion dollars in differences
for buy/sell activities, so you would think fundamentally
if I'm an agency, if I'm agency A
and I wanna buy 100 units of something
from agency B and I wanna buy it tomorrow
that should be pretty easy, everybody reports
and eliminates well, not so.
So as many of you may know but one of the reasons
for that is historically we had probably didn't have
the standards in place that we needed, so we've done
a lot of work and in recent years developing those standards
with you the agency, community, so that we have standards
that we can all abide to and understand and live with.
And two is you know as a very manual or labor-intensive
and paper intensive dare I say a process
so there's a lot of things that go into that
that don't make it effective and don't help us make
the progress we wanna make, so we've launched out working
with you from a standardization perspective
and from an automation professional perspective
with our GM voicing solutions so, you know that's gonna be
a nice tool that we can all use from
an automated fashion where we can capture the data
in a standardized way that's consumable and that
we can also use for transparency and analytics
as we move forward in the buy/sell space
so we are actively right now looking
at your agency implementation plans
I know that's another lift that we've asked
the agency community but I think
it's gonna yield great benefits for our community long-term
and specifically in terms of audit performance and if any
of you were in Jamie selling session yesterday morning
you could probably still feel the passion about getting
to auditability for their fast, so this is
just one component of that as we march along our mandate
for June of 2021 for GM Voicing Implementation.
So again, we're looking at your implementation plans now
we'll be looking at some common themes there and try
to figure out some gaps that we might have to fill
as we march down that path to implementation.
The next thing I wanna talk about in just a minute
is Auto transformation, so if you imagine
when speaking of the FR, so every year
we take 150 entities and their audit data that we use
to compile the Financial Report US Government.
Of those 150 there are about 40 that make up 99%
of those numbers on the FR.
Today's process is probably a little burdensome
to some of you, probably a little duplicative
and so we're marching down this path to be more transparent
more efficient from an audit transformation perspective
and one example would be step one, that I would say
this year is so for 40 of those significant entities
that report were required to do not only your audits
for your financial statements but also an additional audit
for what we would call the closing package
that was used as we compiled the FR.
So the good news is, if you haven't heard
and I think you probably have, that the closing package
is going away this year, so that is just one major step,
one milestone towards efficiency and modernization
when it comes to audit model perspective
and then we're watching out on some some other in issues
that we'll be sharing with the community as we work
through the various CFO Council working groups
and organizations and entities on next steps
but that's one that I think very agencies
are very excited about, I think part of the reason
that we're able to do that is the great job
you've been doing from a GTA's reporting perspective
and the improvement and data quality that we've seen
so all those stars are aligning to help us get
more efficient as a government and modernize
some of the things that we do.
Question.
(clear voice)
How many of you are involved
in producing financial reports?
Okay, keep your hands up, well actually I'm gonna ask you
to raise them again, how many of you when you sit around
the dinner table with family.
(audience laughing)
Would think that they would you know, you lay that baby out
and you just sit down there and start talking about
the numbers on that finance report, do you think
they're gonna, I mean how many you think
they're gonna understand it?
Oh, you must have accountants in your family
that's all I can figure.
(audience laughing)
So, Tim mentioned earlier that your guide
to America's finances, so we recognize that
we recognize as a government that we owe it
to the American taxpayer that we can provide data
that's more consumable and easier to understand about,
really what their government does and how their tax dollars
are spent so, step one for us was your guide
to America's finances that's out on the data lab portion
of https://www.usaspending.gov
and really receiving a lot of positive feedback
on that artifact it's definitely a report
that can is consumable just about anybody so
this weekend family dinner, go out to
the data portal https://www.usaspending.gov,
Pull, actually bring your laptop, pull that baby up
and I'm telling you you will be the life of dinner.
(audience laughing)
Alright, so it makes how we receive funds
and how we spend funds and kind of our government
really understandable, so again that's just step one,
so we've got more things to do and more in a pipeline
from that space but one thing is we launched
it on Tax Day so April, 15th was when
it was actually placed out there and we're looking
to refresh that data in October, so if the data
is getting a little stale but you can be a little teaser
there at dinner that the new information
is coming in October.
Tim also touched on kind of the approach that we use
with that in human centered design and customer engagement
and so in the creation of an artifact like that
if we're just asking each other, it's probably not
gonna be as consumable but we actually took approach
where we actually talk to American citizens
from all demographics, so that we can get
a product there that would be really usable.
So from a standardization perspective, so you hear
a lot of the common themes of the things I've talked about
for is really trying to before I'm previously
a standardization and so one of those areas
and we've got a lot of governing bodies around standards
but really ultimately
the financial management Standards Committee
and its efforts related to the development
of FM standards ultimately serves
to help improve federal financial performance
and to strengthen reporting, so that if any of you
are plugged into the FM SC, so you're familiar
with what works going on in that space.
A couple other things, so Gavin is gonna talk
about expanding services but before he does
I wanna just kind of plug
our Treasury Administrative Resource Center,
shared service offering, so through economies
of scale standardization which is not new ground for us
from a shared service perspective and state
of the art automation and specifically in the work
we're doing with Robotics Process Automation or BOTS
is going to help Arc be the benchmark for governments
most efficient financial processing operations
so that's a little plug for our shared service line there.
And then lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about
the quality service management office, so anybody heard
of the key SMO for financial management?
Yep, yesterday there was a session on that
so Treasury's been pre-designated
as the financial management key SMO,
the key SMO is will serve as a storefront
for offering and managing a marketplace of Commercial
and Federal Financial Management Solutions and Services
including Treasury Centralized Services
this what's gonna be touching on and professional services
that will be available to all Federal Agencies
and Legacy Federal Shared Service Providers.
So, some of the things that the key SMO is gonna
be doing over this next year and again we're pre-designated
so we're still waiting for that official does a designation
and working through that process but some of the things
we're gonna be doing from acute smoke perspective
is working with the agencies on Assessments
and Financial Management Plans,
Developing Baseline Government-wide,
Co-financial and Management System Requirements,
establishing contract vehicles for agencies
to use or consume, developing guidance repeatable process
and standard tools there's that word against standards,
launching the marketplace, so that you have somewhere
to go to consume and then supporting agencies
that have large implementations of process.
So I know that was a lot from
a strengthen reporting perspective
I didn't have the imagery that others did
but again a lot of work for us as a community to work
towards as we work to strengthen our reporting footprint.
Gavin, over to you.
Gavin: Good morning everybody.
-: [Audience Members] Good morning.
-: Like Mike, I can't bring forth the imagery
of Kilauea or Hurricane Harvey,
following behind Corvallis sometimes like falling behind
a Baptist preacher on program.
(audience laughing)
And you know listening to John,
John and I work together in payments
for several years and I couldn't help
but think back to the days when our mantra
around disbursements was on time every time.
On time every time, we were completely fixated
on speed and timeliness and this was, we were much more
in the check world at the time but you know
as time has moved forward, we have shifted our attention
towards the mitigation and reduction of fraud
and improper payments and we've coined a new term
and that's payment integrity and basically,
what that means is working to ensure the payment is made
by the government and it goes to the right person
the right dollar amount, for the right reason
and at the right time.
So, as we're looking to expand shared
or centralized services off service offerings,
here at Fiscal we actually offer a suite
of unified tools which can serve to enhance
the integrity of the payments we disperse on your behalf.
A critical component
of our 10 year Financial Management Vision
is to reduce government-wide improper payments
by expanding data analytics and other services agencies
so they can identify in combat improper pins.
So the term Payment Integrity characterizes
the various systems and processes that exist in the flow
of funds across government to ensure payments are made
to the right recipient for the precise dollar amount
for the correct reason and at the correct time.
So one of the cornerstones of Payment Integrity for Fiscal
is Do Not Pay, Do Not Pay is a free service
where agencies can come in and check multiple data sources
in order to make sure the payment that they're issuing
is to the right recipient.
Do Not Pay also offers robust analytic services
to agencies to help them identify
and prevent improper payments and allows access
to several data sources through
its portal to help agencies determine if a payee
is eligible for program participation
or for receipt of a specific payment.
So to date, we have 57 agencies that come in
through the Do Not Pay portal they represent,
roughly 270 separate programs, all of them accessing
the portal to make appropriate payment determinations.
Of those users across us 270 programs
we have received reports back that approximately,
178 million in improper payments
have been identified, stopped or recouped as a result
of the portal use, that's since its inception
in 2015, so that's one tool.
Another tool we're able to leverage and perhaps
some of you may have heard about it yesterday
is our Treasury Offset Program or TOP.
This collects delinquent receivables
by offsetting federal and state payments.
So TOPs roll in a Payment Integrity World is two fold
it collects improper payments that resulted
in a monetary loss to the government.
For example, if a contractor submits a duplicate bill
gets paid twice but doesn't reimburse the Federal Agency,
TOP will offset the other payments made to that vendor
to recruit that loss, TOP also ensures
that dispersant officials comply with the requirement
to offset payments but offset them in the right way
for the right dollar amounts and at a certain floor.
So TOP make sure that those payments are not offset
from more than what's appropriate.
What I wanna do is encourage all of you if you have
an interest to find out more about what Fiscal Service
is doing to expand our services by attending
the breakout sessions later this morning, there's one
and John mention it's a little bit earlier
on the Do Not Pay Center and also there's
another breakout session on the Payment Integrity Center
of Excellence, so I encourage you all to to to attend those
if you have an interest.
And with that I'll turn it back over to you Tim.
-: Okay, thank you.
I'm gonna turn this open to questions and I know there's
these two mics here but in reality, a lot of you are not
in access to the mics, so if you have a question
and you want to shout it out, I'll repeat it
so that the panel can answer it but in the meantime
I do have a question since I saw there were a lot of hands
for reporting and out so I'll direct this one to Mike.
In that we talked about the your guide
to America's finances which helps under dissects
the Federal Government's Finances at a whole
but from an agency perspective, when I was at SBA
what it was the data act that brought
the location based information to the financial information
that helped me better present the data and the information
to senior management but we also worked at SBA
with the data lab in bringing more other kinds of data
like administrative data
or like being helping us marry the performance
and financial information together, so looking
put your lens on what would you say are some
of the things that from the data team would be able
to help agencies do or what you see is the future vision
for further strengthening reporting within an agency
to help them better present information to senior leaders?
-: Yeah, I'd say analytics is if you think about
our 10 year vision and the maturity model
and one the CFO and their staffs to be focusing on,
analytics of data, so we're part of our 10 year visions
is trying to take that focus away from processing
so you can spend more time on analytics but I think
as we all know that there's a lot of gaps
in the analytics base and not a lot of expertise out there
so our team is really good, we've compiled a really
a sharp team of folks that have experience in that space
where they're able to kind of look at examples
of where you might have questions about
how you can make decisions, so for example
and one example we were just talked about recently
just internal to fiscal but I'm you could extrapolate this
to other agencies would be for example, we were looking at
what kind of data do we need to really try to understand
or utilization of space and then how can we analyze
that data so, there's a couple of things with that.
Some parts of that data we were able to get
and look at to try to make decisions on.
some parts of that data where there were impediments
to even gaining access to that data, so one of the things
that our team is really getting good at is trying
to understand how to overcome some of those hurdles
to access the data and then also helping frame
your thought process into really how you should look at data
and what really type of data you need to gather to consume
because sometimes it's not even available
in its current state so to speak, so you might have
to look at how you might want to change your
even capturing data so that you build
on a forward-looking process, get it consumable
and be able to analyze that.
There are there are a couple of use case,
examples multiple use case examples on the data lab portion
of the website where you can look at things
like housing, like where your funds are going
to your all that matter, so there are things out there
that we are looking at doing to help better
make informed decisions for the agency community
so if there are use cases that your organization has
where you would like to say where to really take
a look at how we're analyzing data and what we can use
to make decisions at least specifically strategic decisions
for your organization reach out to us
so though our USA spending website, there's links there
so you can reach out to us call me, we'll capture
what you're looking to accomplish and try to see
what we can do to help you help you do that.
-: Okay great.
So is there any questions yet from the from the audience?
Member: No.
Tim: Okay then, oh there is.
-: Hello, this question is about the the general concept
of there's an app for that.
Some years ago on the USSGL Division moved out
to West Virginia and so for those of us who
have wanted to participate remotely in meetings
we've had a choice well, the only thing we could do
is dial into a local West Virginia area code
and so my choice has been to either get great reception
on my cell phone which has free long distance
or to get horrible reception on my cell phone
or to get great reception on my landline
as long as I'm willing to put in like
a two and a half hour long distance call.
So recently, there was
a video conferencing app made available
there was so true and I clicked on it
and it was Skype for business and so I said, okay
just download this on to your machine, so you know
of course I checked in with my IT security and said
can I download this app and they said nope.
(laughing)
So then I said could you expand upon that answer
and he said well, this is not on our list of approved apps
and so I said could you look into getting it
put on the list and a while later they got back to me
and they said well apparently there's a cost involved
and we'll get back to you someday
so that's where it stands now.
So this question might be too far down
in the weeds for you to answer but I am wondering
'cause I thought everybody used WebEx
in the Federal Government but you know maybe
there's all kinds of video conferencing app
so my question is what went into the selection of Skype
for business for that particular out, I don't know
what maybe fiscal uses that for everything or whether
it's just the USL as USSGL Division or what
but I'm wondering why did Treasury pick Skype
for business and really what's everybody using anyway
just it would be nice if agencies were kind of on
the same page and we could kind of freely use
each other's video conferencing apps
so that's my question and I know it's probably way way down
in the weeds but if you could?
-: I can't, I mean maybe someone else
I can't answer why Fiscal selective but I can say that
the Small Business Administration also selected it
you used Skype for business but at least in that instance
I know that when we had video conferencing calls
that we could, when we sent out the invite
the other recipient did not have to have Skype for business
to be able to use it, so I'm not sure why
they're saying you need a license for it because
that's not usually the way that's set up
I'm not sure the way we've set it up, I don't know
if anyone here can answer that but if not
I can definitely take that back and find that out
and I do know, I assume went into
the decision was what went into the decision at SBA
when we switch cost and it was something that Skype
for business, Microsoft's product leveraged across
the organization, reduce the cost of telecommunication
within the agency dramatically and I have to assume
that would be the same thing with fiscal service but also
and would have to also look into the question
or the issue about the local phone number
and why there's not maybe an 800 type number
so thank you for raising that, we'll definitely look
into the way that's been implemented, yeah.
Any other questions or comments, observations?
And I have one minute left, so in that I guess
I was gonna ask a couple more questions but maybe
I'll just throw it out as saying when we talk
about customer experience, what are the things
that you're doing within your groups to make sure that
we're taking the customer journey into account
from whether it's the from an agency perspective
or from the users of those agency services perspective
and maybe the Corvelli, I'll start with you
since you have some big efforts going on.
-: Yes, we are really taking advantage
of some of our partnerships and talking with some
of the experts in the field, sometimes
within government, it's just a natural thing
I think, put your head down, you focus
on your immediate surroundings
and we're trying to make sure that we break out of that
and to have the right external perspective
so meeting with partners such as Booz Allen
or I see Forrester in the house and others that
are knowledgeable of the customer experience
we work with Jack Henry and others
so that we are understanding from a broader perspective
what is going on outside of government
is a very important source of information
that we can then apply to some of our planning
and strategic visioning.
We have some big initiatives coming up
where we have to go from theory to actuality
I mean, we have to if you're going to build
the tax collection service for the nation
well you gotta have the voice of the customer
the tax payer community in order for it to really resonate
and be the best service that it can be
so ultimately, we've got to translate what we know
into action plan and then engage customers.
I think that is the key to it all
the plans may be simple and straightforward but
the meaning behind it is important, go out beyond
the Treasury and the bureau and talk with customers
and businesses in hear what they have to say about
what you're trying to accomplish.
Tim: Great, thank you very much and I thank everyone
for your participation, join me
in giving a round applause to our panel.
(audience laughing)