|
General
policy guidelines for financial management systems set forth
in OMB Circular A-127 requires agencies to establish and maintain
a single, integrated financial management system. A-127 further
requires agencies replacing financial system software to acquire
an “off-the-shelf” product that has been certified
by JFMIP.
JFMIP
periodically tests commercial financial management software
products in order to “certify” them for federal
acquisition. This testing process is designed to ensure that
available products comply with all mandatory core financial
management systems requirements, also published by JFMIP.
The objective of this program is to enable agencies to acquire
new financial management systems with the assurance selected
products can handle common federal accounting, reporting,
and electronic business transactions out of the box.
The testing
program is a multi-year cycle of activities that starts with
agency outreach to identify requirements. This process ends
in a formal system test that every commercial vendor must
pass. Test results are made available to agencies to help
them with product acquisition and upgrade decisions.
Requirements
Identification
Federal
financial managers rely on JFMIP published requirements as
the official reference describing the essential characteristics
of their automated systems. Auditors of federal financial
management systems rely on JFMIP requirements as their official
reference for required systems functionality. Vendors rely
on JFMIP requirements to help them understand agency-processing
needs, enabling them to develop improved system solutions.
While
qualification testing is currently limited to mandatory core
FMS requirements, JFMIP’s requirements identification
efforts are far more expansive covering core plus financial
system impacts from:
- Human
resources and payroll
- Inventory
- Travel
acquisition
- Seized
property and forfeited assets
- Direct
and guaranteed loans
- Benefit
payments grants management
- Property
management
- Revenue
management
- Managerial
cost accounting feeder systems
The basic
process followed by JFMIP to update a requirements document
is: 1) organize a project; 2) assemble a draft set of updated
requirements based on new legislation, oversight agency guidance
and emerging business practices: 3) distribute a draft to
stakeholders for comment; and 4) publish resulting requirements
in a final form as approved by the JFMIP Steering Committee.
Test
Development
There
are two types of tests - full and incremental. Full tests
are performed on all qualified products once every three years.
Full tests cover all mandatory core requirements in force
at the time the test is being developed. JFMIP reserves the
right to conduct incremental tests annually. Incremental tests
are designed to test package compliance with emerging financial
system requirements as announced by Treasury, OMB or other
accounting oversight body from time to time. Whether incremental
or full, a qualification test is developed much like a system—using
specifications, development, quality assurance, and rollout.
For the
full test version, JFMIP will translate approximately 600
mandatory functional requirements into a series of business
cases, test steps, and posting transactions that are suitable
for execution in a wide variety of operating environments.
This effort requires considerable expertise including:
- Functional
expertise—USSGL, funding, payables, receivables, cost,
and reporting.
- Systems
expertise—Architectures, platforms, interoperability,
web access, workflow, security, and operations.
- Test
expertise—Scripting, automated execution, configuration,
benchmarking, and capacity planning.
The goal
is to build a resource that will provide the government with
an unimpeachable basis for determining whether a package is
qualified for federal government use. In writing actual test
steps, JFMIP translates mandatory requirements into a set of
system inputs, posting rules, and expected outputs suitable
for execution in a wide variety of package architectures.
The test produced in 2003 contained more than 700 test steps
and 200,000 data points. To manage this complexity, JFMIP used
a custom software tool called the JFMIP Computer-Aided Test
Tool. JCATT stores test cases, steps, and transactions and is
used to generate a complete set of expected results including
financial statements, transaction registers, trial balances,
and Treasury e-commerce files.
Product
Testing
Qualification
testing starts with a vendor application that identifies the
subject package and participating staff. The process typically
ends with the issuance of a certificate of qualification good
for approximately 3 years.
Specific
tasks undertaken by JFMIP during a test include 1) vendor
administration to schedule a test and provide technical support,
2) test execution to enter steps and deal with execution problems,
3) validation of collected outputs, and 4) certification/publishing
of results.
In taking
a test, vendors must configure their packages to JFMIP specifications,
enter the data, and generate the results. While actual execution
only lasts 2-weeks, vendors can take 3 months to complete
this process. During this time, vendors must provide computing
facilities and the software subject to qualification. Test
results for all packages that completed in the 2003 cycle
can be found on this web site.
Agency
Outreach
Agencies
are integral to the success of JFMIP qualification testing
process. Common agency needs drive the requirements identification
process on the front end. Agency representatives help establish
test development priorities and are primary audience for published
test results.
To help agencies stay engaged in the testing process, JFMIP
actively solicits their input using a variety of special study
groups, topical workshops, open houses, surveys and key personnel
interviews. The resulting proceedings, reports, and other
requirements testing-related materials are regularly published
by JFMIP.
JFMIP
uses web-based applications such as this Knowledgebase to
disseminate program information and engage agencies in various
sponsored activities.
|
