State ASAP Users Group Meeting

ASAP State Users Group Meeting
In conjunction with the
National Association of State Comptrollers (NASC)
Charleston, West Virginia
March 8, 2005

Introductions/General Remarks:

Christine Ricci, Manager of the Customer Liaison Staff, began the meeting with introductions of the panel members: Steve Allison, Administrator, Office of the Controller, Idaho, and ASAP Customer Board (ACB) State Representative; Chris Tighe, ASAP.gov Development; Carol Cole, ASAP Operations; Margie Springer, ASAP Customer Liaison Team; Adele Allen, Federal Reserve Bank-Richmond, Customer Business Application Function (CBAF); Jennifer Criss, Accountant, Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD), and ACB Federal Program Agency (FPA) Representative; Rick Flanagan, Accountant, BPD; Kent Linscott, Accountant, BPD; and Victor Poore, Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) Program.

An overview of the current FPAs using the ASAP.gov system was provided as well as future agency users. Calendar year statistics for 2004 were provided as well.

Attendees were asked how many in the audience were still using the legacy mainframe system. Of the two that raised their hands, one was a legacy mainframe user and the other a Voice Response System (VRS) user. The VRS user only has a payment request once a year so the VRS is the appropriate mechanism; however, the legacy mainframe user was encouraged to migrate to the .gov internet system. We will eventually be doing away with the legacy system and we will no longer support the system.

In light of the total dollar transactions previously discussed, it is not surprising that ASAP.gov has one of the world's most advanced secure internet payment systems. Due to the heightened security measures, users may have noticed that the ASAP.gov site can be a little slow. No other system in the world transfers more money to recipients. ASAP.gov has multiple firewalls due to the dollar volume of transactions. We are working to make the system faster and more efficient.

Steve Allison spoke briefly about the role and responsibility of being one of the two State representatives on the ACB. As an advocate of State Users, Steve encouraged members of the audience to contact him concerning any issues relating to the ASAP.gov system. He also encouraged members to become a state representative. Contact information for Steve and other ACB representatives can be found at: http://fms.treas.gov/asap/cab/contacts.html.

Preview of New Internet Enrollment:

A brief overview was provided:

• Federal Program Agency Enrollment Initiator (EI)
• Identifies Recipient Organization and Point of Contact to be enrolled
• Point of Contract (POC)
• Identifies organization officials:
• Authorization Official
• Financial Official
• Head of the Organization (HOO)
• Approves organization officials
• Authorization Official (AO)
• Enters organization's information and users
• Financial Official (FO)
• Enters banking information
• Federal Program Agency (FPA)
• Approves organization enrollment

The biggest difference for Payment Requestors is that there will no longer be any 'payment requestor organizations'. Instead, there will be recipient organizations and recipients (individuals). For example, if the state of Arkansas sends funds to the University of Arkansas, the University is a recipient organization. And since the state of Arkansas is a state where the comptroller function is centralized; the University of Arkansas will have to name a POC in the comptrollers office.

First, there is a new role for the FPA in the Enrollment process. The EI starts the enrollment process by identifying the recipient organization with a DUNS number (October 2003 requirement) and POC.

Note: FMS imposed a requirement January 1999 for all users to provide their DUNS and TINs. If you have not, we will be contacting you in the next few weeks to update this information before we implement Release 2.0.

Next, the POC identifies two organization officials: The AO and the FO.

The HOO then approves organization officials. While there may be multiple POCs within a recipient organization, there can only be one HOO to approve the organization officials. The HOO can also appoint a Redelegated Head of Organization (RHOO) to approve future designations and approvals.

It is important to note that within recipient organizations, the POC, the organization officials (the AO and FO), and the HOO can be the same person.

The POC within a recipient organization can name more than one AO. The AO is responsible for entering the recipient organization's contact information (address and phone numbers) as well as user information.

The POC within a recipient organization can also name more than one FO. The FO is responsible for entering the banking information to receive payments via ACH, Fedwire, or both. Per FMS' Green Book rules for ACH transactions, ASAP.gov sends a Prenote to the financial institution to verify the bank account. A financial institution has 6 days to respond to a prenote. For Fedwire, the account is validated the same day.

It is important to point out that for the new enrollment process, each person gets up to 45 days to complete their portion. If one person exceeds their 45 days, the entire enrollment process has to be restarted.

Towards the end of the enrollment process, the FPA approves the organization enrollment. The Certifying Officer (CO) has the option to name an Enrollment Reviewer (ER) who sees all the recipient organization's information that has been entered with the exception of banking data. The ER only sees the last 4 digits of the banking information.

Previously, FMS' Regional Financial Centers (RFCs) had verified a recipient organization's banking information on behalf of FPAs as part of the enrollment process. However, our Legal Counsel has advised us that the accuracy of the banking data is the responsibility of the FPA's CO. Hence, we designed the new enrollment process to give the responsibility back to the COs. This new policy will take effect in the near future.

Inherent in the new Enrollment process is the interdependency of each role in the process. This structure was intentionally developed so that if there were any criminal activity associated with grant funding, collusion would be needed at various levels.

To provide as much flexibility as possible in developing the Internet Enrollment process, organization officials named by the POC do not have to be employees of the recipient organization. Since state structures vary (e.g., Oklahoma is centralized and Georgia is decentralized), states have flexibility on how they set up their accounts. Account draws for a state can range from the state treasurer doing all the work to the state allowing recipient organizations to make their own draws.

Screen shots were shown to demonstrate the new look and feel for the ASAP.gov application.

The audience was asked whether they would prefer to see instructions every time a user signed onto the system or have the option to see the instructions. General consensus of the audience was that a link for "Do You Need Instructions" at logon would be preferred. A user would have the option (Yes/No) to view instructions.

Listed below is the current browser ASAP.gov supports:
-Netscape 4.x or 7.1 ; ASAP.gov does NOT support Netscape 6.x
-Internet Explorer 5.x or greater

Listed below are the browsers to be supported in the Release 2.0 of ASAP.gov:
-Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 - 6.x (including 6.0 with Service Pack 2)
-Netscape 5.x and 7.x (Netscape 6.x will not be supported)

Although there are other browsers available at the date of this document, ASAP.gov will not support them at this time. Recipients and Agencies may use unsupported browsers (such as Firefox and Avant), but they do so at their own risk.

Q: Could the point of contact or organization official be a director?
A: Yes, whoever would legally sign the Official Authorization Form could be the POC.

Q: Will users have to enroll again if the Head of the Organization (HOO) changes?
A: For the new enrollment process, user information can be modified if the HOO changes. The CO also has to certify the updated information. There is a 45-day period where action has to be taken. If there is no action after 45 days, the process has to start over.

Q: We have a new Director. Will we have to go through this process?
A: For the current process, you would not have to enroll again. But, if there are changes, you need to let your servicing RFC know so that the old Director's name can be replaced with the new Director's information. We will have a yearly re-certification process that will be automated in the future.

Q: Are you saying that all users have to do is log on and the system will automatically ask if their information is current?
A: We are in the process of building the capability to keep user information updated. After the enrollment process is implemented, the system will prompt you to validate that your information is current. The automated recertification process will occur once a year.

Q: Will the new enrollment process for ASAP.gov pre-populate information?
A: No, as long as both FPAs use ASAP.gov. The recipient organization will have the option to update contact or organization information.

Q: If a recipient organization is receiving funds from two different Federal agencies, do we have to register twice?
A: Yes, the information will be presented to the HOO or RHOO who can change information as needed or required.

Q: For our state, the Finance Office draws all funds via ASAP. We currently write a check to our entities but would like to transmit via ASAP.gov. Will these entities have to enroll in ASAP.gov?
A: That is an internal process that should be resolved within the state.

Q: Will the Federal Government ever require the use of one grant payment system?
A: There are currently 25 grant making agencies in the Federal Government. There was a CFO Council decision that required agencies to consolidate grant payment systems to only three: The Payment Management System (PMS) within the Department of Health and Human Services, ASAP.gov within the Treasury's Financial Management Service, and the Department of Defense's system. Some of the grant making agencies, like the National Science Foundation, received a waiver from the CFO Council. The FPA should be contacted and asked why they are still using their own proprietary system when the CFO Council requires FPAs to use one of two civilian grant payment systems.

Q: Do you have to enter the ALC and region code when you make a payment?
A: If you want all the recipients for one ALC, just enter the ALC. It may be easier to create and use a template.

Q: When we print notifications, it comes out blank.
A: We are in the process of redesigning the entire notification process. The new process will provide information about the subject of the notification so you don't have to open it if you don't want to. You can also delete it without reading it. Currently, users are getting duplicate notifications for actions that have been taken since the legacy system was based on organizations - not roles as in the ASAP.gov system. We are in the process of improving the system to make it easier and less redundant.

Q: There are a lot of times when you hit 'enter', nothing happens and we may get an error message or nothing.
A: You need to call the FRB CBAF staff's Help Desk at the time you are experiencing the problem so that they can help with the process. Electronic or photocopy screen shots along with the date and time of the occurrence would be helpful in pinpointing any outstanding problems.

Q: When I initiate a payment, it gives me an error message "Page Not Found".
A: This is another instance where you would need to call the FRB CBAF staff's Help Desk. "Page Not Found" errors are more common with the Internet Explorer browser than with Netscape. Instructions to download a MicroSoft patch is on the FMS ASAP website www.fms.treas.gov/asap.

Q: What is a DUNS number?
A: The Data Universal Number System (DUNS) number is issued free by Dun and Bradstreet and is a unique organization identifier and is address specific. If a requestor organization has 5 different addresses, each DUNS number would be address specific to a particular location of the organization. DUNS numbers are mandatory for all grants awarded on or after October 2003. It is a unique identifier that is used throughout the grant life cycle.

ASAP.gov Update:

Training:
For users interested in signing up for ASAP.gov training, we will have a sign up process posted on the FMS ASAP website by the end of March. Once we have about 10 registered participants at one location, we will schedule a training date and time. The training locations are: Philadelphia, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. This is a slightly different process from last year where training dates were scheduled. Only 1 or 2 users would sign up only to have one or both cancel. Since a lot of time, energy, and resources are put into preparation for training, we hope this process will work better. As we are requested to give on-site training to individual agencies, we will see if other users in the area can also participate. We don't charge for training. Your cost is limited to travel expenses.

Currently the ASAP.gov system has a dedicated training environment for use so that all users can practice with data to mimic specific actions with no effect on their production data. We encourage all users to use the training application site. We've recently added a banner to the training environment to ensure you're not posting information to the wrong environment. The banner tells you that you are in the training environment.

The current schedule for the training environment availability is posted on the FMS ASAP website. By the end of October, the training environment will be moved to another platform to provide greater availability and accessibility.

The ASAP.gov system also has tutorials that provide animated step-by-step assistance with each process within the ASAP.gov system. Since they are currently difficult to find, we are in the process of putting the tutorials as an option on the Help screen.

Users are encouraged to sign up for e-mail notifications on the FMS ASAP website. Once registered, users will receive an automatic e-mail notification whenever the information on FMS ASAP website is updated (e.g., important notices, user group meetings, training dates).

Q: Will you have a "Training Button
A: We do not currently have plans for one, but it's a good suggestion that we'll take back with us.

Reports & Inquiries
We've received a lot of feedback about the problems users have been experiencing with Reports and Inquiries. We have provided an updated listing of the fixes that have been implemented. We encourage users to test Reports and Inquiries functionality to ensure that any past problems have been fixed correctly. We have corrected Reports where data is now appearing in the correct columns. If users are still experiencing problems, please contact your servicing RFC. Electronic or photocopy screen shots along with the date and time of the occurrence would be helpful in pinpointing any outstanding problems.

All problems with Reports and Inquiries will be fixed before we turn off access to the legacy system and deploy the new enrollment process. A copy of the current listing of the latest fixes will be posted on the FMS ASAP website.

Notifications
Members of the audience voiced their concerns over the duplicative and redundant notifications they have received. Users also expressed frustrations over the lack of information provided, such as sender or subject information.

Notifications are not considered as an official record of a transaction. The primary types of notifications a user will receive are when an account is created, increased or decreased, or if you are put on agency review status.

Legacy Sunset
Based on meeting the following criteria, we hope to end access to legacy ASAP with the implementation of Release 2.0.

• Contingency/Failover
  There was a successful Contingency/Failover test in January, but the process took longer than expected because ASAP.gov was just one of the systems in the test. Another test was scheduled in February to get a more accurate assessment of the ASAP.gov recovery time.
• Replication of User Databases
  ASAP.gov is able to replicate user databases.
• Reports & Inquiries
  As reported earlier, we need feedback from users on whether Reports and Inquiries are working as they should. Users should contact their servicing RFC if they are still experiencing problems. The listing of the latest fixes will be posted on the FMS ASAP website.
• Conversion of Remaining Users
  We encourage all users who are not already doing so, to begin using ASAP.gov before legacy access is removed. We will be monitoring and contacting users who continue to use the legacy access. Users will be notified at least 30 days in advance of the legacy access cutoff.

Single Sign On
ASAP.gov, along with other systems like Pay.gov, are housed on the Treasury Web Application Infrastructure. An effort known as 'Single Sign On' will allow users to have the same ID and password to gain access to multiple systems on the TWAI in the near future.

Unique E-Mail Addresses
It is very important for all users to ensure that their contact information is current. It is especially important for users to update their individual e-mail address. ASAP.gov uses your e-mail address to send your initial user ID and important messages relating to the application. Due to security reasons, ASAP.gov users cannot use group e-mail addresses. Users must have individual e-mail addresses. The CBAF staff has been successful in contacting users who previously shared office e-mail addresses to obtain new individual e-mail addresses. There are Internet sites that offer free e-mail accounts so users can obtain an individual e-mail address.

We have also found that some users do not accept e-mail from the ASAP application. Please make sure that your e-mail service allows receipt of mail from the following address: asapgov@rich.frb.org. If you have any questions, please contact the ASAP CBAF Help desk at 804/697-8384.

It is also important that users not share IDs and passwords. We have an authentification process in place to verify a user's identity by requiring them to answer 3 questions. If the questions are not answered correctly, no information is provided to the requestor.

Password Policy
While the password format remains the same, the TWAI policy for the timeframe to reset passwords will be increased from 45 days to 90 days. Users will be notified before the change is effective. Logon IDs are still deleted after 9 months of non-use. The 9-month period is used in consideration of users who only need to use ASAP once to twice a year.

ASAP.gov Enhancement Requests
Last year we implemented a formal Change Management process by which users can request changes or enhancements to the ASAP.gov system. However, users were using the process to enroll, delete, and modify user information. These types of changes need to be referred to your servicing RFC. Since it was not the intended use of the form, we changed the name of the form to clarify its purpose. The new name is the ASAP.gov Enhancement Request Form. The form and instructions are posted on the FMS ASAP website.

The following contact information was provided:

Q: My state only has one TIN. A Debt Offset was taken from a particular payment - except it wasn't the right organization.
A: This is another internal state issue. You may want to go back and see if they will do separate TINs for each organization.

Future Enhancement Schedule:

New Release Schedule:
An overview of the new release schedule was provided.

Release 2.0: Targeted Implementation Date: June 2005
Contents:

• Internet Enrollment for Recipient Organizations
• Allows Recipient Organizations the ability to enroll in ASAP.gov via the Internet
• Provides changes to the "look and feel" of the application

Release 3.0: Targeted Implementation Date: December 2005
Contents:

• Internet Enrollment for:
  - Federal Program Agencies
  - Individuals
  - 1031s
  - Organization Batch
• Allows organizations other than Recipient Organizations to enroll in ASAP.gov via the Internet
• Notification Enhancement
• Updates the Notification function to identify the user name and provide a description of the Notification
• Eliminates duplicate or repetitive Notifications
• Allows users to delete Notifications without reading them

Release 4.0: Target Implementation Date: June 2006
Contents:

• ACH Debit for Returns
• Allows recipients to return payments or partial payments if a grant recipient draws down too much money and wants to return some of it.
• Recipients will initiate an ACH debit to their bank account for the amount they want to return.
• Your bank must allow the account to be debited.
• Current Debt Offset
• Current debt is defined as debt that is less than 18 months old
• Allows a Federal Agency to withhold a percentage or whole dollar amount from each payment drawn by an organization that owes money to that Agency
• This applies only to outstanding current debt with that Agency
• Reports
• Implements previously approved user requested changes to Reports (i.e., customized search for specific date ranges).

Q: What is a 1031?
A: It is a unique and highly controlled program that deals with large dollar and time sensitive payments within the ASAP.gov system. FPAs enter into agreements with banks to draw funds from the ASAP.gov system as checks clear. FPA examples include the Department of Energy or Tricare. Examples of the types of payments involved include Medicare and Medicaid.

Q: Can you give an example of ACH Debit for Returns?
A: A user accidentally drew down $2,000.00 too much and needs to return the funds. A user will be able to be return funds by an ACH Debit to a specific account via ASAP.gov. Users need to ensure that their banks allow debits to their accounts.

Q: With the schedule of upcoming releases, will we be required to have upgrades to our systems?
A: With the possible exceptions of newer versions of Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Adobe, generally users will not have to upgrade their systems.

Unemployment Trust Fund and the ASAP System:
Since about 300 transactions a day are transmitted through the ASAP system, an overview of the Unemployment Trust Fund (UTF) was provided.

Unemployment Trust Fund ASAP Transactions for 2004:

Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) Program:
An overview of the CMIA Program was provided.

Federal Grants to States Are A Huge Cash Flow ($376 Billion Annually)
Customers: 50 States/5 Territories/District of Columbia
Partners: 20 Federal Grant Agencies
Number of Grants: 245 Federal Grants
Tangible Annual Savings for Treasury = $16 - $50 million