Interior adding services, customers to Lines of Business

The Interior Department’s National Business Center is preparing up to four proposals to compete to provide financial management services for agencies as a center of excellence under the Lines of Business Consolidation Initiative.The NBC, Interior’s fee-for-service business provider, hopes to add some of those proposals as customers, said NBC director Doug Bourgeois. The center was a financial management shared-services provider before the Office of Management and Budget introduced the current Lines of Business initiative. In fact, financial management accounts for 25 percent of NBC business, Bourgeois said.“The challenge is to create a business model for financial management services that is on par with the private sector while complying with federal regulations,” Bourgeois said yesterday at an industry event sponsored by market research firm Input Inc. of Reston, Va.NBC, also a center of excellence for the human resources Line of Business, anticipates about 12 organizations migrating to those services this year. NBC plans to conduct a pilot by March 2006 that will expand HR services to include employee intake, recruitment and selection, and a benefits selection process, Bourgeois said. Financial management, however, is a broad offering, including core financial services and bolt-on applications and services. NBC offers the hosting of core financial systems, travel services, procurement system support and accounting transactions. It can provide a choice of financial management systems for agencies: CGI-AMS’ Momentum, Oracle Federal Financials and SAP software.NBC also will provide IT hosting and applications management support for Interior’s new financial and business management system once a systems integrator is selected.