Departments have been preparing for almost a year by mapping business processes.
"The more work that departments do ahead of time to prepare to come into FI$Cal, the more successful they are. The department of FI$Cal has provided an unprecedented amount of support to the departments that are coming into the system in July to help them be ready," Tamma Adamek, deputy director of FI$Cal communications, told Techwire.
In all, 88 departments have already come online in separate batches over the last few years.
"By design, we saved the largest and most complex departments until the final release," Adamek said.
Each release has offered learning opportunities for the state agency, which combines accounting, budgeting, cash management and procurement operations into a single system.
"During each release, we identify onboarding issues and their solutions and build on those," she said. "For example, we learned how to handle emergency procurements, confidential vendor payments and bond solutions in early releases. We used those answers for subsequent releases. The final release takes into account all previous lessons learned."
FI$Cal will continue to support the state and individual departments after the final rollout.
"Since we won’t be preparing for a new group of departments to come into the system next year, we can dedicate all of our resources to helping the new guys this time," Adamek said.
While the Treasurer's and Controller's Offices already use FI$Cal, "their control functions have not yet been brought onto FI$Cal. [The] Treasurer’s functionality is planned to go live in October this year," FI$Cal CIO Subbarao Mupparaju told Techwire.
They have taken longer because their legacy systems need to communicate historical statewide information to FI$Cal.
The agency's 2017-2021 strategic plan is available online for perusal.
