OPEN SESSION

EHRP & NBRSS Update from Mary Cushing and Wayne Berry:

NBS Overview: NIH is replacing the existing ADB and the CAS with the NIH Business System (NBS). The NBS will encompass the following six components: Financial Management, Travel, Property, R&D Contract, Supply/Acquisition, and Service & Supply Fund.

NBS Deployment Schedule: The design, configuration, and test stage are occurring now, and the GL/Budgeting will deploy on October 1st.

The Implementation of the NBS will introduce the Accounting Class Structure (ACS) to the NIH.

BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF THE ACS

Benefits

• To enhance funds control for compliance with the Anti-Defiance Act and the Departmental Accounting Manual.
  
• Financial reports across consistent dimension
  
• Timely, accurate reporting of info in custom formats using one system.
  

Challenges

• Changing from a structured one-dimensional system to a flexible multidimensional system.
  
• Represents a conceptual change for those familiar with the Common Accounting Number (CAN).

FUNDS CONTROL OVERVIEW

Funds Control at the Allotments Level

Funds Control is the point in the accounting system where financing and budgeting data intersects to ensure that spending does not exceed availability.

The Funds Control at NIH that are currently planned are: allotments, allowances, and operating budgets.

Proposal for Allotments: To continue current practices but also issue allotments for reimbursements. Some changes may occur for the Central Services organization.

Reimbursement Allotments: Issue allotments for reimbursements:

• Consistent with the DHHS policy requires separate allotment.
  
• Oracle software requires that reimbursements are a separate allotment.
  
• Allow flexibility in engaging in reimbursable activities.

Funds Control at the Allowance Level:

Current NIH practice:

• There are no standard criteria for establishing allowance levels.
  
• The CAS provides no mechanism to alert officials that they might over-obligate an allowance.

NBS Proposal:

• Establish a two value allowance level with hard funds control
  
• External allowances- including extramural grants, contracts and extramural Cancer Control.
  
• Internal allowances- include- IR, RMS, and Cancer Control intramural and management costs.
  
• At the allowance level, hard funds control would automatically prevent an over-obligation at the point of origin for the transaction, such as a purchase order.

Funds Control at the Operating Budget Level:

Below the allowance, soft funds control will be established through the operating budget.

• Operating budgets sub-divide allowances by organization, budget activity, mechanism, and costing codes.
  
• These items are subject to soft funds control. Soft control means permitting over-obligation at the operating budget level as long as funds exist in the overall allowance; however the individual processing the purchase order will receive a warning.

Benefits of the NBS Funds Control Levels

• Two level policy of standard allowances and flexible operating budget levels.
  
• Establish consistent approach to funds management at the highest level.
  
• Provides flexibility at the IC level to control and track costs.
  
• Implementation of hard funds control proactively assist in guarding against some potential Anti-deficiency violations.
  
• Utilizes system controls embedded in software.

*AN IMPORTANT LIMITATION*- The controls are effectively only for the actions originating in NBS- no proactive control of obligations in feeder systems such as payroll and IMPAC II until they are fully integrated.

SAC OVERVIEW

Currently, legacy systems for finance and human resources define organizations within ICs differently.

• SACs are used to define organizational reporting relationships within the DHHS HR system (IMPACT).
  
• They are not used in the current Central Accounting System or Administrative Database.
  
• In the NBS, the use of SACs will be expanded to financial applications wherever organizational codes are required.
  
• When the NBS is deployed later this year, it will rely on SACs to identify the office to which the funds are allocated.

*IMPORTANT*

"NON HR Orgs" that are currently coded into the MAS, such as grant pools, will need to be associated with an organization that holds the operating budget against which obligations are incurred.

Benefits of using SACs

• Fulfill the DHHS requirement to assign responsibility for funds control.
  
• Eliminate reconciliation of financial data
  
• Enable funds to be allocated to the appropriate managers using the SAC

However, using SACs will also require an additional effort:

• Users will need to better understand how the SAC identify organizations.
  
• IC administrative staff should assure that IC employees are accurately identified with the appopriate Sacs so the obligations can be associated with the correct operating budgets once the CAN based legacy systems retire.

Handout provided!

Change Management and Training presented by Susan Corey:

Importance of Change Management:

Change Management presents an integrated communications, training, workforce transition, and evaluation approach to assist managers, supervisors, and employees to transition effectively into a new way of accomplishing work.
Attention to change management issues promotes acceptance of business changes and successful implementation and minimizes cost overruns from project delays.

Scope of Change Management Activities:

• Assess Organizational Impact
  
• Create Communication Plans
  
• Develop Training Materials
  
• Plan for Workforce Transition
  
• Evaluate CM Activities

NBRSS Training Approach:

• Teach a role-based, process-based curriculum
  
• Use customized training instance and practice instance
  
• Deliver just in time training (10 weeks prior to deployment).
  
• Conduct instructor-led training
  
• Create an online performance support management system to augment instructor-led training with self-paced learning tools (NBS only)
  
• Offer an ongoing post-deployment training
  
• Conduct evaluations of training

EHRP TRAINING UPDATE

DHHS is offering EHRP/Peoplesoft training courses from July 22- September 6th at no cost.

Handout provided!

Updating SAC Data in EHRP presented by Stella Griffin:

SAC data is updated once each pay period.

A batch process is executed to update the Department table with new SAC codes.

Each agency is provided with a listing of new modified and inactivated departmental IDs (SAC codes).

In addition, a listing is provided with departmental IDs (SACs) that were not inactivated since they were still encumbered by employees.

Handout provided!

Ms. Griffin gave an overview of the recent deployment for the CDC agency. Ms. Griffin stated that the overall transition went well and there were few problems that were fixed immediately.

Bonuses and awards (except for On-the Spot Awards through the ADB) have been tested - few have failed and were corrected quickly. NIH currently working with the DHHS/PSC to assure we can still do OTS Awards through the ADB

The deployment for NIH will be September 9th.

Paydays will remain the same.

If the testing in the HRDB doesn't work, NIH has informed the DHHS/PSC that NIH will not deploy in September.