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By Sheryl Morrow, Assistant Commissioner, Federal Finance

I have had the privilege of working for the Financial Management Service (FMS) for more than 25 years, before it was even called FMS (for those of you who may remember the former Bureau of Government Financial Operations). Prior to my arrival at FMS, I worked as an accountant for the Department of the Army and the former U.S. Customs Service. With that foundation and perspective (yes, I actually remember back that far), I have always made it a priority to understand the needs of our customer agencies, as well as the impacts that FMS’s requirements may have on the agency programs. As the new Assistant Commissioner for Federal Finance, I am responsible for developing and managing the Government’s collection and cash management programs. We are working with our customer agencies on a number of new programs and I would like to discuss a few of them that will have significant impact on the way agencies process their collections.

We have embarked on a major new initiative that you may have read about in the last edition of The Financial Connection – the Collection and Cash Management Modernization (CCMM) initiative. The CCMM initiative will streamline and modernize most of our collection programs. Some of the CCMM improvements will result in benefits to the Treasury, and others will provide significant transaction and reporting enhancements for agencies. Two of the new programs in the CCMM initiative ― the Over the Counter Channel Application, and the Transaction Reporting System ― will have far reaching impacts on federal agency collection processes.

The Over the Counter (OTC) Channel of today consists of two systems (Paper Check Conversion Over the Counter [PCC OTC] and TGAnet); five networks (Treasury’s General Account [TGA] bank network, International Treasury’s General Account (ITGA) bank network, Federal Reserve Bank TGA bank network, Card Acquiring Service, and Seized Currency Collection Network); over 120 TGA banks that rely on the paper SF 215 deposit ticket and the CA$HLINK II cash concentration and reporting system to process federal agency deposits; and peripheral OTC-related programs and services. Any federal agency that receives money at its offices is impacted by this channel ― and that’s most agencies. The current OTC Channel application will be transformed from its stove-pipe model characteristic in today’s environment, to a one-system solution that permits agency customers to go to one place for all of their OTC activity. It will integrate the PCC OTC and TGAnet systems, support agencies making deposits of seized currency, establish one hardware device to capture check, cash and card transactions, and provide an interface for agencies to view OTC deposit reports. The new application will transform the OTC Channel into a retail business model that will provide numerous efficiencies for federal agencies through one streamlined system.

The Transaction Reporting System (TRS) will be a centralized repository of detailed collection transaction information that will simplify federal agency revenue management and accounting processes. It will provide integrated daily transaction reporting for federal agencies across all FMS collection systems. The integration of this data will provide federal agency users with a single touch-point and data warehouse for all of their collections. Agency users will have a single source for not only the collection transaction detail currently coming from multiple endpoints, but also the associated deposit reports now in CA$HLINK II. Having detail and summary deposits in one place will greatly streamline the functions of accounting and reconciliation for revenue collections. With special reporting and analytic features, TRS will allow agencies to sort and review their transaction and deposit data swiftly and in ways which are unavailable today. TRS will also send deposit reports containing central accounting classification information to the Governmentwide Accounting (GWA) System, satisfying the new GWA reporting requirements.

By virtue of its business mission, TRS will integrate a large number of systems and interface with a wide community of stakeholders. It will also drive significant changes to the way agencies reconcile deposits to cash receipts, replacing the current CA$HLINK II model.

Lastly, over the past few years, FMS has been talking to customer agencies about the Holistic Approach. From a holistic standpoint, we are developing a complete understanding of the agencies’ entire collection portfolios by reviewing and analyzing agencies’ cash flow data as reported in CA$HLINK II. FMS will recommend an integrated set of efficient electronic collection mechanisms to meet an agency’s collection needs, e.g. Pay.gov, PCC OTC and TGAnet. We will ask each agency to sign a joint Cash Management Agreement (CMA) that outlines the Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) collection commitments, performance metrics and conversion timelines. This commitment binds both the federal agencies and FMS to implement improved strategies which will result in increased electronic collections. Ultimately, this new approach will assist us in reaching our goal of 90% EFT for collections.

While FMS’s programs have been effective over the years, I am very excited about the improvements that will be realized with the CCMM initiative, including the more efficient services for our customer agencies and substantial cost-savings to the Government. As we begin implementing the CCMM initiative goals and cash management agreements, I look forward to working closely with our agency customers to ensure they understand our plans and we understand their business needs.

CCMM FY 2007 Program Statistics

• Collected $3.1 trillion through more than two dozen FMS collection programs
• Processed more than 400 million transactions
• Will save FMS tens of millions of dollars
• Projected to be completed by 2010

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