“Closing Out the Project” is the headline on an update issued Thursday by FI$Cal Director Miriam Barcellona Ingenito, who’s led the department since July 2016.
“With all that is going on, I do have some good news to share,” she said in the department’s monthly Leadership Newsletter. “FI$Cal is moving forward toward officially closing out the FI$Cal project.”
FI$Cal was conceived in 2005 as a joint undertaking of four state agencies — the Department of Finance (DoF), the Department of General Services (DGS), the State Controller’s Office (SCO) and the State Treasurer’s Office (STO) — to serve as the state’s unified accounting, budget, cash management and procurement IT system. Its budget has grown significantly over the years, and its target completion date has changed, but now Ingenito says the migration is nearly complete.
“Everything except the CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports) reports are to be implemented by this July 1, and we are currently working with the Department of Technology and the Legislature on a new plan and schedule for the remaining CAFR subproject,” Ingenito says in Thursday’s announcement.
When complete, FI$Cal will eliminate the need for more than 2,500 department specific applications.
FI$Cal’s road has been, at times, a bumpy one. It’s been scrutinized and criticized by, among others, State Auditor Elaine M. Howle, whose office said in a December report that the transition from state agencies’ individual financial ledgers to the unified FI$Cal system “has diminished the state’s financial reporting and accountability and could lead to increased borrowing costs.”
The state Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) weighed in a month later, faulting FI$Cal for delaying the project completion date by one year, to July 2020; for adding an additional $150 million in costs; and for narrowing the scope of the undertaking.
In her update, Ingenito notes that last month, she and representatives of the four partner agencies briefed a state Senate budget subcommittee on FI$Cal’s status.
“It was gratifying to bring along our four partners to testify about the value FI$Cal brings to state operations,” she says.
One of them was DGS’ deputy director for administration, Andrew Sturmfels, whom Ingenito quotes in her update: “In procurement, transitioning to FI$Cal has helped us gain insight on what the state is buying, from whom, and for what price. … FI$Cal has centralized and standardized detailed procurement data that we’re not just using to make better decisions — we’re also sharing it with the public. Through FI$Cal, we now have a single platform that allows real-time, accurate reporting for each individual department and the state in total.”
Andre Rivera, deputy director of STO, also testified before the subcommittee: “All state departments have the ability to log into FI$Cal and electronically submit their deposits. Now that this functionality is available in FI$Cal, we have shuttered our legacy electronic deposit forms platform. Our eight depository banks can now send their daily bank files directly to FI$Cal, which are then automatically loaded without manual intervention.”
And Richard Gillihan, chief operating officer for DoF, addressed the issue of legislative oversight of FI$Cal, Ingenito noted. Gillihan expressed FI$Cal’s desire for “a thoughtful conversation with the oversight entities and with the Legislature, of course, about what’s the appropriate level of oversight and what the oversight should be focused on.”
Some large state institutions are exempt from participation in FI$Cal, including the state universities, the two large state retirement funds, the Legislature and the State Auditor’s Office.
Ten departments’ migration to FI$Cal have been deferred for now Ingenito said, including CDT, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of Justice, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Transportation.
Ingenito’s full update can be found online.
