Taking the Bait

Federal financial managers who have tried-and sometimes struggled-to help their agencies centralize financial management have some lessons for those who are considering it.

• Fix mistakes. "No matter how much work you do, there will always be some things that you have to react to in the field of battle. Don't be afraid to take corrective steps," says Jesse King, chief financial officer at the Forest Service. "A mistake can be to be too strongly committed to the redesign process and to try to make a flawed process work."
• Communicate with employees. "You can't tell employees too much or too frequently," says King, especially when you're making big changes. He uses e-mail, video conferences and conference calls to communicate with the agency's 30,000 employees, and avoids jargon.
• Know the people you're contracting with. If you're moving your financial management to a center, then you've got to be comfortable with the people who manage it, says Jeffrey A. Smith, EEOC's chief financial officer. He chose the Interior Department's center to handle EEOC's financial management systems partly because he had received a high level of customer service from the center in the past.
• Learn about your options. Before EEOC established a contract with Interior's center, Smith took time to survey his options by reaching out to his contacts in the field. That research helped him realize that he wanted to work with a federal center because commercial centers had not yet established themselves.
• Talk to other agencies. "Do some benchmarking," says Joshua Baylson, deputy associate chief financial officer at the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA officials talked to other agencies about what had worked for them before issuing the agency's request for proposals for a financial management system. The RFP was released in October 2005. EPA is looking at both public and private centers to host its new system.
• Understand your current system before making changes. "Some agencies have been in a rush to implement systems without the proper controls being in place," says R. Carter Pate, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Washington Federal Practice, which works with dozens of agencies. He recommends simplifying financial processes before moving them to an outside center.