USDA plans financial management system overhaul

The Agriculture Department will seek proposals to replace its core financial management system to improve its performance and comply with federal accounting and system standards.

The acquisition will include program management, transition and migration support, application and integrator services, and hosting services for the USDA Financial Management Modernization Initiative.

The request for proposals will be available on or about Dec. 29. Agriculture will conduct a pre-proposal conference in mid-January 2006, the department said in a pre-solicitation notice last week.

The contract award will be based on overall best value through evaluation of vendors' technical solution, corporate and government experience, past performance, subcontracting and small business utilization, and price. The department reserves the right to make more than one award.

In a request for information in August, Agriculture said it anticipates that the enterprisewide implementation of a new financial system will include expanded functions, integration of critical components and business process re-engineering where appropriate.

Agriculture's initiative includes the use of a financial management Line of Business center of excellence or other commercial or federal hosting site to operate the production financial system, the deployment of a single Web-based system to replace several mainframe systems and the migration of several legacy accounting systems into one.

The new system will address a growing need to better integrate program, financial and budgetary information to improve department management.

Mary Mosquera is a staff writer for Washington Technology's sister publication, Government Computer News.