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September 2004
Budget Formulation Update
The NASA Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) recently postponed the Budget Formulation module data initialization activities in order to help focus our Centers' attention on completing their current budget for initial submission to OMB later on this year. The OCFO has acknowledged that Budget Formulation data initialization activities performed to date by several Centers provided invaluable operational experience which will assist the OCFO as it moves forward in developing its significantly updated budget formulation structure and preparation processes.
Currently, the OCFO is developing an Agency-wide standardized budget structure and is, therefore, also reviewing in depth NASA's overall budget planning process in order to generate an approach which will directly support the new structure. A key component of this effort is a review of the new Budget Formulation system and a detailed analysis showing how it will need to evolve to support the Agency's forthcoming new budget processes. This assessment is expected to be completed this fall.
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Contract Management Module
The Integrated Financial Management Program (IFMP) Contract Management Module (CMM) will provide a comprehensive tool to support contract writing, contract administration, procurement management and data, and reporting management for NASA. The functionality provided by CMM will provide added efficiency to the procurement processes, and will be integrated with existing IFMP components.
To date, the contract management source evaluation team has completed one round of vendor demonstrations, and is in the process of documenting its initial proposal assessment. Another round of vendor demonstrations is planned for late October at the IFMP Competency Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The process is on schedule with a contract award planned for December 2004.
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Travel Manager 8.2
The Travel Manager (TM) team has been very busy preparing for the scheduled upgrade to Gelco’s Travel Manager 8.2 (TM 8.2), which will go-live in early October. TM 8.2 incorporates changes recommended during the Travel Business Process Review which moves us to the most currently supported platform available and also enables us to prepare for implementation of the e-Travel initiative.
Although the individual traveler will see very few changes, Center Travel Administrators will notice a redesigned administrative module, as well as several enhancements for the Web. In preparation, the Competency Center in Huntsville, Alabama has been updating training materials for TM, and will also conduct classes for Center System Administrators. During the class, participants will learn about the new TM administration functions and enhancements, and become familiar with the new administrative module.
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Labor Distribution
The Integrated Financial Management Program Office is creating a business case for a single system to consolidate the ten Center labor distribution systems. Each Center currently has its own processes and systems for distributing labor costs. By creating one system we will be able to better standardize the labor distribution process for the entire Agency.
The Labor Distribution project is using the ePayroll Steering Committee as its governing body. The committee recently reviewed the five potential alternatives presented in the Business Cases and are planning a subsequent meeting in mid-October. The five alternatives are:
- Continue with the Status Quo
- Modify an existing Center Labor system
- Develop extension to WebTADS
- Develop within Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) environment
- Develop extension to SAP.
The implementation of a new Labor Distribution system is slated for FY ‘06.
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Recruitment One Stop Phase I Progress
The Phase I goal of Recruitment One Stop (ROS) is to create a single job posting site for Federal agencies. For NASA, this means we will continue to use our own vacancy builders and electronically transfer announcements to the USAJOBS site via an XML gateway.
Phase I is mainly integration work that is focused on vacancy announcements and posting to the USAJOBS website. The go-live date for ROS Phase I is the end of September 2004.
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Erasmus
The purpose of Erasmus, the executive “dashboard”, is to provide senior managers cross-Center information system with consistent information about key projects within the Agency. Erasmus became operational in 2002 and now has 100 Programs and Projects using the system. System enhancements designed to increase functionality and implement new capabilities have been developed as operational experience has grown.
Work is progressing to interface Erasmus with the IFMP Business Warehouse. This initiative will enable cost and budget data to be automatically populated in Erasmus directly from the single data source of record. The IFMP Office was the prototype for this effort.
Other Programs and Projects will be phased in as their budget structures become compatible with the new structure being implemented by the Chief Financial Officer’s office. The Erasmus team also reconfigured the Erasmus display to reflect the Agency Transformation.
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e-Payroll Goes Live
The government-wide e-Payroll initiative seeks to transform the current Federal payroll environment, which consists of twenty-six separate, redundant service providers, into a more consolidated, standardized operation that integrates the Payroll and Personnel functions across the Federal government. This consolidation from twenty-six providers to initially four and later two will make payroll processing far more efficient, with a projected savings of $1.1 billion over 10 years.
Debbie Percival and Jim Joyner discuss a caller's question
at the e-Payroll Customer Support Center.
As part of this initiative, DOI has become NASA’s Payroll provider, and NASA has recently exchanged its own NASA Personnel and Payroll System for DOI’s Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS). This exchange occurred on August 9th, 2004, at which point in time NASA’s payroll and personnel professionals began to enter their transactions into the new system. DOI successfully issued its first NASA payroll on August 31st.
Between now and February 2005, NASA centers will implement FPPS’s online HR process for all promotions, awards, and details. This initiative also provided NASA the ability to mandate the use of a previously-implemented employee self service system, Employee Express (www.employeeexpress.gov), for all employee-initiated benefits and payroll changes. For more information about NASA’s e-Payroll project, go to http://epayroll.nasa.gov/.
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