OIG Finds Commerce IT Modernization Project Lacks Best Planning Practices

Key Takeaways:

• The BAS modernization program, one of Commerce’s top Departmental priorities, will integrate a suite of financial and business management applications in a cloud-hosted environment to support its mission.
• An OIG audit of BAS found program officials not following best practices in defining reengineering activities, documenting current financial processes, and attempting to optimize existing business processes.

The Department of Commerce is in the midst of modernizing its financial and business management applications under the Business Application Solutions (BAS) initiative. While any large-scale IT modernization effort in the federal space is worth an applause, a recent OIG report identified faults in the department’s planning practices for the program.

In particular, OIG found that the BAS program lacks a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) plan to define reengineering activities and timelines, and streamline understanding among stakeholders of the reengineering process. Without a BPR, the OIG notes, the program does not have the necessary discipline to change business processes.

The agency watchdog also found that program officials do not plan to document Commerce’s existing financial management processes. According to the OIG, “the lack of such documentation means that the program may not fully understand affected processes, identify baseline performance data for processes, and manage potential impacts of changed processes, including impacts to processes not within program scope.”

Moreover, rather than explore optimization of existing business processes, BAS program officials aim to replace existing processes with new ones adapted to the acquired applications. However, the OIG argues that, “allowing IT to drive change without analyzing and reengineering processes in advance, the program risks wasting resources and automating inherently inefficient processes. This approach may also miss an opportunity to fundamentally improve how the Department conducts its financial business.” The OIG proceeds to explain that the software-first approach will force department bureaus to change their processes strictly within the limits of the new system, hindering efficiency and effectiveness of alternative approaches.

The BAS program aims to acquire a new system, integrating a suite of commercial-off-the-shelf financial, and business management applications, an enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence solution in a cloud-hosted environment. Slated for design, implementation and migration in three phases from FY 2020 and FY 2024, the BAS program requested $22M in FY 2020. The FY 2021 budget request outlined $17.1M for implementation activities including data modeling, gap remediation design and implementation, interface designing and building, etc.

Commerce awarded a 20-year contract to Accenture last year worth $341M to acquire the licensing and hosting services for the BAS system in a Software-as-a-Service model.  Specifically, Accenture will provide the following solutions: Oracle Electronic Business Suite for financial management, Procurement Request Information System Management for acquisition management, and Sunflower for property management. According to the program website, Commerce deployed the Sunflower module for end users earlier this month.

While the OIG did not request a formal response to its findings, department and program officials received notice of the OIG’s program inspection. The OIG does plan a follow-up audit of the BAS modernization program in the future.   

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