GSA seeks comments on financial guidance

The General Services Administration’s Financial Systems Integration Office is seeking comments on its Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB) Migration Planning Guidance document. The FMLoB is a President’s Management Agenda initiative to lower the cost and improve the quality of the government's financial management systems.

The public can e-mail comments to fsio@gsa.gov by June 12. The Draft FMLoB Migration Planning Guidance Comment Tracking Sheet is posted on www.fsio.gov.

GSA developed the guidelines to help agencies decide whether to switch to a shared-service provider under the FMLoB initiative. Before making the switch, federal agencies need to evaluate costs, benefits and risks, according to the guidance. Shared federal and commercial services can offer viable alternatives to in-house solutions for managing the risk, performance and cost of operating financial systems, it states.

The draft guidance suggests ways to find the best shared-service provider, and it answers questions about federal and commercial shared-service providers.

It also gives tools and templates for:

• Procurement guidance

• Change management guidance

• Implementation guidance

• A menu of services from federal and commercial shared-service providers

• Service-level agreements