The Financial Management Line of Business

by Samuel T. Mok

Samuel T. Mok, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Labor
Co-chair of the FMLOB Task Force

At circus performances, daredevil motorcyclists perform a breath-taking feat by racing in multiple directions around the inside of a steel sphere. While each performer must expertly drive his own cycle to defy gravity, only careful planning and real-time coordination prevents collisions. This design of the sphere, critical to the success of the act, must be sufficiently transparent to show the performers; yet, be strong and large enough to support the activity.

Today's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) offices face similar coordination and planning challenges. CFOs must coordinate efforts to achieve unqualified audits, eliminate material weaknesses, address reportable conditions and management challenges, solve long-standing weaknesses, and accelerate annual financial statement reporting and the accountability report submission. All these must be done while adhering to all funding regulations amidst shrinking budgets and growing program demands; and confronting pervasive skill gaps, attrition and knowledge management issues.

Avoiding collisions in meeting these challenges can be difficult; but building the right structure to support these activities is essential for success. For the CFO, financial systems that generate accurate information provide the critical structure to make all the multi-tasking possible. Outputs from these systems can support analysis and decision making at every level of a Federal enterprise-from day-to-day decisions by line managers to cross-program decisions by senior policy makers.

Under the President's Management Agenda (PMA), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) created a Financial Management Line of Business task force (FMLOB). FMLOB is one of five lines of business that include Human Resources Management, Grants Management, Federal Health Architecture, and Case Management. Each line of business addresses redundant IT investments and business processes across the government. Agencies work together across traditional boundaries rather than focusing on their individual agency needs. This approach to the PMA makes government more citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based. OMB appointed the Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Department of Energy (DOE) to lead the interagency team managing FMLOB. This co-chair arrangement recognizes the importance of coordinating and leveraging the statutory roles of CFOs and CIOs to make such enterprise-wide endeavors successful. DOL accepted the joint leadership role with strong support from Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. As a Harvard MBA with a deep appreciation for effective financial management and sound fiscal integrity, Secretary Chao sees FMLOB as an important component of the President's efforts to improve the overall management of Government.

The FMLOB team includes several important partner agencies as well. There are the Departments of Homeland Security, the Interior, Justice, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Ex-officio agencies that participate include the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration (GSA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Departments of the Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

OMB and the lines of business task forces have focused on business-driven, common solutions developed through architectural processes. "Common solution" means a business process or technology-based, shared service made available to government agencies. "Business driven," addresses distinct business improvements that directly affect performance goals. "Developed through architectural processes," means using a set of standard processes and tools. For the FMLOB, this construct leads to a vision of developing a governmentwide financial management system strategy that captures efficiencies and reduces costs without compromising support for agency performance accountability, financial controls, or mission effectiveness.

The FMLOB task force has set goals out to define, analyze, and implement options that will enhance cost savings in the financial management systems; provide for standardization of business processes and data models; promote seamless data exchange between Federal agencies; and strengthen internal controls through integration of core financial and subsidiary systems. The FMLOB task group's current objective is to evaluate alternatives and recommend overall strategy for: a financial management enterprise architecture, standardization of business processes and data models, and business efficiencies in acquisition and delivery.

This past spring, GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy and OMB issued a request for information (RFI) to provide industry and government service providers a means to describe solutions and implementation approaches for achieving the goals through common solutions and a target architecture. The RFI provide industry and potential cross-agency service providers an opportunity to offer best practices that may contribute towards a common solution.