FSIO closing on 31 March

FSIO is closing on 31 March

The Obama administration will shut down the Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) - originally aimed at aligning, consolidating, and creating standards for federal financial systems, an Office of Management and Budget official announced this week.

In a memo sent to agency CFO's on Tuesday, OMB controller Danny Werfel announced that the General Services Administration's Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO) will cease operations on March 31.

The FSIO was originally set up to work in alongside the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to collaborate with agencies and stakeholders to "Reduce costs by providing a competitive alternative for agencies to acquire, develop, implement, and operate financial management systems [...] standardize systems, business processes, and data elements and provide for seamless data exchange between and among Federal agencies by implementing a common language and structure for financial information and system interfaces." according to the memo.

Reasons for closure

Furthermore, in the memo Werfel pointed out that "rapid advances in technology are requiring us to rethink how we implement financial systems" and that the FSIO had achieved many of the objectives the government had in mind when creating the office four years ago.

"We believe the FSIO has finished developing business process and data standards as it related to its mission," the memo said. The current process of financial system deployment, Wurfel wrote, leads to financial systems that don't meet agency needs, don't produce the right kinds of information needed for informed decision making, and take a long time to deploy.

The memo has raised many issues, most importantly about how any new financial system could evolve sufficiently and fast enough to keep up with modern technological advancements.

The FSIO has had successes, with the development of a number of standard financial business processes, a common government-wide accounting classification structure, standard charge card data elements, a framework for financial system migrations, and a guide for measuring financial systems performance, according to Information Week.

Ross Densley

Ross Densley is a graduate from Bath Spa University, and has freelanced for several magazines ranging across a section of topics such as animation, business, film and lifestyle. When Ross is not working he writes and edits his own satirical website.

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