Standardizing Business Exchanges: Vision for the Future – Part 1
Imagine you are on vacation in Europe and check into your hotel room, eager to start your sightseeing. You realize your phone battery is low and pull out your charger to plug it in. When you go to plug it in, you see that your charger does not fit the electrical outlet! How do you feel when this happens?
As electricity became available, countries developed their own individual electric systems and standards. At first this was simple. Everyone used the systems and outlets available to them. But, as the world became more global and interconnected, this individualization became a challenge. When people traveled, none of their electronics could plug into the electrical sockets of another country. To help ease the challenges, innovators created universal power adapters to standardize the individual outlets and support integration. Standardization through the universal power adapters resulted in lower costs, more convenience, and a better experience for travelers.
Similarly, as federal business practices developed, agencies built financial systems that were configured to their specific needs – just like the original electrical systems! These configurations resulted in financial systems and the business systems they share information with (for example, procurement, travel, grants) varying from agency to agency. The outcome was that agencies could not share systems or aggregate data across the government because solutions and data were not consistently defined.
The Federal financial management community is striving to ease challenges and work more efficiently through greater standardization of financial management data, processes, and practices. To help enable this shift, the Financial Management Standards Committee (FMSC) sponsored a project with the Financial Management Quality Service Management Office to standardize the way agencies share information among systems. The interfaces they developed can be adopted by all agencies. These interfaces act like universal power adaptors, allowing differently configured systems to produce standardized output to support easier integration with other systems.
The interfaces will guide the future development and configuring of financial and other business systems. It will promote modern and automated business processes, improve data quality, lower operating and maintenance costs, and improve customer service with federal financial management solutions.
Also, standardization will enable agencies to use their resources more effectively for higher value tasks such as providing better services to the American people - just like a universal power adaptor provides you more time to explore and research new things, so that your trip is a more valuable experience!
This is a blog series, so be sure to check back for the next blog “Standardized Exchanges and the Accounting String.” This blog will provide a view into the standards and answer some key questions you may have such as How does the standard work? What is included in this phase? What is coming next?
To learn more about the FMSC, check out our page!
For questions, e-mail us at FMSC@fiscal.treasury.gov.