UFMS Background

President George Bush's Management Agenda calls for a more efficient and effective government, one that is results-oriented and citizen-centered. Subsequently, Secretary Thompson cast his vision to help HHS evolve from a collection of distinct and separate agencies into "One Department."

In line with restructuring toward "One Department," Secretary Thompson launched the Unified Financial Management System (UFMS) initiative and issued an executive memorandum on June 14, 2001, in which he stated that "the purpose of this endeavor is to achieve greater economies of scale, eliminate duplication and provide better service delivery."

The following mission statement guides the work of the UFMS Program team:

"The Department shall have an integrated Department-wide financial system that consistently produces relevant, reliable and timely financial information to support decision-making and cost-effective business operations at all levels throughout the Department."

The Secretary directed that the Department's Unified financial system consist of two major components: CMS' Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS) and a system for the rest of the Department.

The UFMS Program team is focused on achieving the following objectives:

• Improving financial systems effectiveness and efficiency
• Providing enhanced management empowerment
• Increasing compliance with legislative mandates and regulatory requirements
• Improving management internal controls
• Increasing economies of scale
• Maintaining "clean" audit opinions
• Enhancing financial systems architecture

Prior to the Secretary's directive, certain HHS agencies had already begun to replace their antiquated accounting systems: NIH in 1999, CDC in 1999, HCFA (now CMS) in 1999 and FDA in 2000. These efforts are now being brought into the UFMS fold.

Why use a Unified Financial Management System?

Consolidated financial reporting will become much less complex as a result of UFMS. Instead of collecting data from five core systems, the Office of the Secretary (OS) will interact with one. Data will be combined through a centralized, HHS-wide consolidated financial reporting capability. This capability will provide integrated financial management information for HHS-level financial management statements, reports and queries, as well as consolidated financial statements. Data uploads and "data calls" currently required for consolidated core financial management information will be improved and streamlined.

UFMS will take full advantage of modern accounting system features. Specific advantages include the following:

• Enhanced internal controls
• Data standardization across the enterprise
• Improved user security
• Robust and flexible query and reporting capability

In summary, UFMS will significantly reduce the logistical complexity of coordinating and consolidating financial information throughout the Department. Moreover, UFMS will provide HHS and the component agencies with a flexible and responsive reporting capability. Specifically, the system will do the following:

• Reduce the resources and infrastructure needed to perform financial operations
• Reduce the number of information flows between the administrative and core financial systems
• Streamline both internal and external financial reporting, and enable consolidated HHS financial reporting
• Take advantage of advanced technical capabilities

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