Agencies encouraged to make contractors cater to their tech needs

Federal agencies should encourage contractors to design technology that meets their needs, rather than adapting to products already on the market, a former Office of Management and Budget official said Tuesday.

"We have to begin to shape the commercial marketplace," said Jerry Williams, deputy chief information officer at the Small Business Administration. Williams, who formerly worked in OMB's financial services branch, spoke before an audience of managers involved in selecting new financial management software for the Labor Department.

Labor plans to purchase efficient, user-friendly technology to replace its current financial management system, which dates back to 1989 according to a recent report from the General Accounting Office (03-903R). To facilitate the buying process, the department invited six software companies to showcase their financial management products Tuesday. Four companies-Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft, American Management Systems Inc. and SAP-participated.

When speaking with software vendors, Labor Department managers should have a clear idea of the capabilities they would like to see in new technology, Williams said. This idea should be based on the department's needs, rather than on what managers have already seen out in the marketplace, he said. They should not feel limited by the software packages that already exist, Williams added.

The Labor Department has developed a vision of what the ideal financial management software would help it accomplish, according to Samuel Mok, the department's chief financial officer. A new system would be user-friendly and would allow managers to easily access up-to-date information about program costs, he said. It would also allow the department to spend less time processing financial transactions. Eventually, Mok hopes that Labor's financial office will spend 20 percent of its time processing transactions, as opposed to the 60 percent currently allotted to transactions.

Even though Labor has received clean audits in recent years and been recognized for various achievements in financial management, the department still has plenty of room for improvement, Mok said. Labor earned a yellow light in financial management on the Office of Management and Budget's latest traffic-light style management scorecard.

With new technology in place, Labor Department managers should be able to build on previous progress in implementing the President's Management Agenda, Mok said. The new system will make it easier for them to send reliable financial data to officials quickly, for example. These officials will in turn be able to use the data to make informed policy decisions.

Labor hopes to pick a vendor to provide software for its new system within a year, said department spokesman Greg James. Anna Hui, special assistant to the chief financial officer, would not disclose the value of the contract, but said it would be a multi-year agreement. In May, Labor awarded Savantage Solutions, an information technology consulting company, with a contract to help manage the software selection process.