We Need Your Help: Do We Have the Right Ingredients
Date: February 1, 2018
There’s nothing better than a delicious pie. Or cake. Or bread.
Eating is easy. But baking can be tricky. Is the oven hot enough? Do we need to grease the pan?
Following every step in the process to the letter and using the right ingredients can result in your desired outcome.
Federal financial management is a bit like baking. By meeting the right requirements, following processes correctly (i.e., the steps), and choosing the best data elements (i.e., ingredients), you’ll have far better results.
The Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation worked to document the requirements and processes and the data elements required to develop “recipes” for better, more efficient federal financial management.
We’ve documented the steps:
- Federal Financial Management System Requirements (FFMSR)
- Federal Financial Management Functions & Activities List
- Federal Financial Management Business Use Cases
We’re now at work on Financial Management Standard Data Elements. These elements reflect the data elements needed to meet the inputs, outputs, and processes defined in the FFMSR.
Out of all this, regrettably, we will not deliver delicious baked goods. But, these steps and ingredients have the potential to equip federal agencies to work more efficiently.
Agencies will be able to use these data elements (and the other components) when evaluating their financial management systems, acquisitions planning, transition planning, and in financial management improvement planning. In other words, we’d all be using the same cookbook, with better results.
One of first uses of this material will be to help evaluate Software as a Service solutions in partnership with GSA’s Unified Shared Service Management Office. More information on this exciting initiative can be found at https://www.ussm.gov/.
We’ve gotten a lot of input from some of the best federal financial brains in the business. Over the past eight months, FIT has collaborated with a government-wide working group, made up of representatives of Executive Branch agencies, reviewing over 600 elements and submitting over 300 comments to identify these core data elements.
The final inventory of 527 data elements deemed critical for federal financial management is now available for public review. Most of these elements can already be found in the Data Act Information Management Schema (DAIMS) or the Fiscal Service Data Registry, but we have also identified 27 more data elements that were previously not defined.
We encourage you to take a look and share your thoughts. Please visit our GitHub website (https://bureauofthefiscalservice.github.io/federalfinancialmanagement/), and let us know. Do we have the right ingredients?