Presidential Innovation Fellows
Presidential Innovation Fellows: 21st Century Financial Systems
The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused 6-13 month “tours of duty” to develop solutions that can save lives, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation. You can apply here.
21st Century Financial Systems
Moving financial accounting systems of Federal agencies out of the era of unwieldy agency-specific implementations to one that favors more nimble, modular, scalable, and cost-effective approaches.
The Federal Government has traditionally approached new financial system implementations by focusing on implementing commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) packages and adapting them to agency-specific needs. This approach has resulted in many cost and schedule over-runs, aborted implementations, and overly complex systems that are not used to their full potential. The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) are charting a new course for Financial Systems focused on using shared services, standardized requirements, and fewer agency-specific tweaks. The 21st Century Financial Systems project is focused on designing and building an evidence-based “test” that Treasury will use to ensure agencies don’t put out over-engineered requirements. The key to this effort will be designing and implementing a credible and efficient process to determine which agency deviations from a standard set of requirements are truly required and what would be the best way to accommodate those deviations. The success of this program could lead to dramatic and lasting cost savings on behalf of American taxpayers.
