Four Agencies to Run Shared Financial Services

Invoking President Obama’s second-term management agenda, the Office of Management and Budget has named four departments that will seek to save the government money through shared services in financial management.

Deputy budget director for management Beth Cobert joined with Fiscal Assistant Treasury Secretary Dick Gregg in a May 2 blog post announcing that the four shared service providers that will provide core accounting and modernized financial management to other agencies will be the Agriculture, Interior, Transportation and Treasury departments.

“As agencies migrate to the four providers, the government will achieve economies of scale and standardization,” Cobert and Gregg said. “Using a financial management shared service provider will help agencies reduce the risk of new system implementations, allow for faster and less expensive technological innovation, provide long-term cost savings, and meet government-wide requirements and deadlines. As a result of these improvements, agencies will be able to focus more of their resources and leadership attention on mission-based programs.”

The move is a follow-up to instructions laid out in a March 2013 memo from then-Controller Danny Werfel, which stated, “The cost, quality, and performance of federal financial systems can be improved by focusing government resources on fewer, more standardized solutions that are implemented and operated by more experienced staff.”

The units within the departments that will begin accepting agency migration of financial data are Agriculture’s National Finance Center, Interior’s Interior Business Center, Transportation’s Enterprise Services Center, and Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center. They were selected after a “comprehensive application process that included leadership commitments, system evaluations, reviews of plans for scaling operations, and determinations that the providers have the capabilities to address the requirements of Cabinet level agencies,” the officials wrote.

More shared-service providers could be named in the coming years.

(Image via Denys Prykhodov/Shutterstock.com)