OMB prepares to align financial systems

By month’s end, the Office of Management and Budget will release for comment a document that describes an enterprise architecture framework aimed to align agencies’ programs with their administrative systems.Jerry Williams, OMB’s chief of federal financial systems, said yesterday that the draft version of the rewrite of the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program’s framework document will be ready by the end of this month.“The current document lists core systems, but it doesn’t show how the systems relate governmentwide or within an agency,” said Williams, who moderated a panel discussion at a JFMIP conference in Washington. “This will be at a very high level and very generic.”The draft document will cover all government financial management systems, from procurement to loans to human resources, and will set out how they should be integrated within agencies and governmentwide to share information and give a more complete view of financial positions.Williams also said the document would help vendors understand how information flows between programs and administrative systems, so they can write software to fit the architecture.The final draft version could be released to the public in early fall, Williams said.