VA moves to USDA financial shared services
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin using the Agriculture Department’s financial management IT shared services to replace its own existing systems, the department announced Tuesday.
USDA is one of the leading federal shared services providers, offering two financial services — the Pegasys Financial Services program, which supports CGI’s Momentum product, and the Financial Management Services program, which supports SAP’s core financial system — out of its National Finance Center.
USDA is one of four federal financial shared services providers, along with the departments of Interior, Treasury and Transportation.
Moving to shared services allows agencies to focus more on their mission rather than maintaining their exisiting IT systems or having to plan and implement the costly move to modernized systems, especially when such a service is not in the agency’s expertise.
“The Department followed a rigorous process in selecting USDA,” interim CFO Edward Murray said in a statement. “Demonstrating a truly integrated decision-making process, subject matter experts across VA participated in intense week-long workshops and provided feedback to ensure we selected the right partner for transformation success.”
USDA says it supports 29 organizations through its FMS program and 40 under the PFS program.
“As a top FY17 VA priority, this effort will increase the transparency, accuracy, timeliness and reliability of VA’s financial information,” Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson said. “It’s critical that VA continues to implement solutions that result in improved care and services to our Veterans with fiscal accountability to American taxpayers.”
VA did not return FedScoop’s requests for comment.
