Accenture to replace USDA financial system

Accenture has received a $102.6 million contract from the Agriculture Department to replace its core financial-management system to provide general accounting, funds management and financial reports.

The contract includes program management, transition and migration support, application and integrator services and hosting services for the USDA Financial Management Modernization Initiative, USDA said in its posting on Federal Business Opportunities.

USDA's integrated system is expected to improve its financial-management performance, align with its enterprise architecture and best practices, and comply with federal system standards. It also will streamline financial-business processes across the department.

Over time, the system will support federal e-authentication requirements and a single point of validation and access for vendor data. It will also be designed to integrate with e-payroll, e-government travel and Grants.gov systems.

The contract runs for a base period of one month with nine one-year options. During the base period, Accenture will develop a draft Financial Management Modernization Project Plan, according to details USDA has previously posted on the site.
During the first option year, the contractor will focus on system analysis, application system configuration and development of interfaces to USDA enterprise legacy systems. Accenture also will plan for agency deployments, data migration and training.

During the subsequent years, the contractor will deploy the application, develop agency feeder system interfaces and operate and maintain the system. The department anticipates full implementation by mid-2011.

Under the Office of Management and Budget's Financial Management Line of Business, agencies will compete their financial-management systems among private and federal shared-service providers, which will provide information technology hosting, application management and system implementation services to agencies. Each shared-service provider will provide those services to multiple agencies using a common application to reduce the redundant approaches currently used.

The migration to shared-service providers will also reduce the risks and resources needed to implement modern core financial-management systems by using applications that have proven successful. Agencies that are planning to buy a new financial-management system or significantly upgrade an existing system must use a shared-service provider.

Mary Mosquera writes for Government Computer News and Federal Computer Week, 1105 Government Information Group publications.