US Department of the Treasury Selects SAS® for Financial Management

Established by Congress in 1789, the US Department of the Treasury is responsible for promoting prosperous and stable American and world economies. Its mission includes managing the U.S. government's finances and financial systems, which is the responsibility of one of its bureaus, the Financial Management Service.

More than a decade ago, in an effort to ensure government access to timely, reliable, and comprehensive financial information when making decisions that have an impact on citizens' lives and livelihood, Congress passed the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act. Among other things, the act sets goals for improving the financial information systems as well as the integration of accounting and budgeting information. New accountability requirements of the CFO Act combined with an overall need to reconcile budgeting and accounting systems, prompted Treasury to seek a technology solution to meet its massive financial needs. So Treasury turned to SAS, and together they implemented SAS Financial Management Solutions.

Like many government departments, Treasury has a number of major organizational units falling under its leadership. The Department of the Treasury is organized into two major components: the main departmental offices and the operating bureaus such as the Bureau of Public Debt, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the US Mint and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As a result, Treasury has numerous reporting structures with which to contend.

In Search of an Easier Way
The Office of Management and Budget requires Treasury to generate six department-wide financial statements, derived from financial data submitted by the bureaus to the TIER - Treasury Information Executive Repository, the department's financial data warehouse, on a monthly basis from their individual accounting systems.

Initially, these statements were being prepared by bureau-generated spreadsheets and consolidated by staff of the Office of the Deputy Chief Financial Officer. No formal utility was available to help Main Treasury process the information efficiently. Generating these financial statements was a labor-intensive process, requiring two full-time accountants just to handle the coordination efforts. Restricted by time and resource constraints, manual number generation was their only option. In the end, there was little time left for detailed business analysis so that insightful business decisions could be made.

Additionally, financial data reported monthly from each group are consolidated into the department's annual accountability report, that is submitted to the President and Congress. This process involves continuous number generation along with processing and analyzing volumes of data from disparate sources and formats. Main Treasury needed an easier way to extract quality data out of TIER.

SAS Brings Consolidation, Intelligence
Treasury had ideas of how to reach its goals of producing annual financial statements, generating monthly reports and analyzing financial data. Treasury initially speculated that online analytical processing (OLAP) reporting models alone could be built to generate timely reports in similar formats. In its brief introduction to OLAP, Treasury was convinced that the mere capability of "slicing-and-dicing" through mounds of financial data would provide enough analytical and numerical comparison functionality to meet its reporting needs. SAS' implementation team pointed out that Main Treasury was on the right track in looking to OLAP technology for some of its answers. However, SAS' team also explained that when OLAP functionality is seamlessly paired with a sophisticated warehousing strategy and leading-edge analytical and statistical tools, more advanced analysis can truly be achieved.

Since Treasury was already using SAS' analytical technology for financial forecasting and statistical analysis, implementation of SAS Financial Management Solutions was seamless. From the beginning, SAS showed Treasury an initial return on investment by proving that its forecasting tools would subsidize the decision support systems Treasury asked SAS to implement, says Steve App, former Deputy CFO.

"In March 2001, Treasury received its first unqualified or 'clean' auditor's opinion on our department-wide financial statements," App adds. "That financial milestone emphasizes Treasury's dedication to improving technology and processes to better serve the American taxpayer." The Department replicated this accomplishment in March 2002. In April 2001, the Treasury Secretary directed the department to accelerate its monthly close from 20 business days to 3 days by June 2002. While many business practices had to be reevaluated and changed, the Department achieved their goal. Finally, in compliance with completing the Performance and Accountability Report which includes annual closing, audit and submission, they received an unqualified or "clean" audit opinion on November 15, 2002 which surpasses the two year schedule set by the Office of Management and Budget for all federal agencies. As well, Treasury completed their FY2003 financial statement on November 15th with another clean audit opinion.

And now it no longer takes weeks to prepare financial reports for the deputy CFO's office. Reports needed for crucial decisions are available practically on demand with SAS.

"In the process of developing separate budgetary and accounting models in SAS, budget and accounting staffs sat down together for perhaps the first time," App says. "We've all worked together for years, but the budget people and accounting people had never debated how each side affects the other. This experience has been a real eye-opener that left both sides with a greater appreciation for what the other has to deal with."

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