By Subbarao Mupparaju, Chief Deputy Director, Department of FISCal.
In 2024, the Department of FISCal (FI$Cal) marked 10 years since the first wave of departments began transacting in the FI$Cal system. Since those first departments came onto the system, our teams and partners have worked tirelessly to onboard the 149 departments now using the system, ensuring that the system grows and evolves, remaining modern and secure well into the future. The work of the past year has continued this goal, as we work on our roadmap of activities outlined in Government Code Section 11865.
The roadmap highlights projects planned over the next decade, and includes a total of 50 projects; as of November 2024, 11 have been completed. We have also made significant progress onboarding deferred departments. In July 2024, we welcomed the California Department of Technology and the Department of Rehabilitation, which represented the culmination of planning efforts that began two years ago and included cooperative efforts between FI$Cal, who provides resources and tools, and the new departments, who had to complete a schedule of activities to move their financial management activities to the system. Additionally, we continued to make progress in onboarding the California Department of Transportation which is scheduled to go live in July 2026.
Last year, the Governor signed AB 127 into law, which establishes July 1, 2026 as the date the State Controller’s Office (SCO) will transition the state’s accounting book of record to the FI$Cal system for statewide reconciliation, transaction processing and year-end close processes. This year, as part of our roadmap activities, we continued executing multiple projects to implement system enhancements and perform data validations to facilitate this transition. As of November 2024, seven enhancements have already been completed and 38 others are in progress.
Security remains one of our top priorities. Using the CalSecure framework as our guide, we have implemented several security enhancements to ensure the system is secure. In November 2024, we released a modern data loss prevention solution. Additionally, we continue our journey to the cloud by migrating our key back-office systems and services to the cloud, and now we are migrating FI$Cal’s non-production environments to the cloud.
This year, we partnered with the Department of General Services (DGS) to implement Aconex, a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution, to extend FI$Cal’s functionality to support project costing and portfolio management. Aconex aims to streamline cost management for DGS projects, aligning with FI$Cal’s strategic goals of continuous improvement and outstanding customer service.
We continue to improve and enhance the system, with our teams actively engaging FI$Cal end users to determine their ever-evolving needs. Based on feedback throughout the year, as of November, FI$Cal has released 106 enhancements, continually adding innovation to the system and improving user experience.
In addition, we developed Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement 87 and 96 reports for lease/right-to-use subscription assets and lease/right-to-use subscription liabilities for contracts meeting the GASB criteria.
We updated the FI$Cal system to align with the federal government by replacing the catalog of federal Domestic Assistance Number with the Assistance Listings Number on existing reports, queries, online pages and interfaces.
We automated the monthly closing periods for statewide assessments, a process that was previously conducted manually. This automation ensures the process runs consistently each month.
To help reduce manual entry into the system, we enhanced the automated employee payroll accounts receivable interface from SCO, completely automating the payroll accounts receivables.
In addition, we implemented a solution for departments to reclass claims interfaced into FI$Cal from SCO. The new functionality includes reclassing the claim, liquidating purchase orders, and updating 1099 reporting for the associated suppliers.
Customer service is one of our core values. In 2024, we resolved more than 34,000 customer support cases via the FI$Cal Service Center (FSC). Through continuous improvements, including efficient triage and internal notifications, more than half of these tickets were resolved the same day. 84 percent of these cases were resolved in less than five days, and 95 percent of these cases were resolved in less than two weeks.
In addition to the assistance we provide through the FSC, our FI$Cal Learning Center (FLC) team continues to update and develop trainings and resources to help people navigate the system. In 2024, our team delivered training to more than 2,050 attendees, including virtual instructor-led training sessions and flipped classroom style trainings.
Feedback from our end users continues to guide us. In addition to the FSC, FLC, and the Customer Impact Committee, earlier this year, we engaged a contractor to conduct an annual survey of FI$Cal end users. The purpose of the survey was to determine the ease of use of the system by end users and their satisfaction with accounting, cash management, procurement, and budgeting functionality. Among the survey results, we saw a strong positive association with our direct support services. 94 percent of users reported satisfaction with FSC services, and 96 percent of users reported satisfaction with FLC services.
Overall, our progress in executing roadmap activities while providing world-class customer service has been exceptional. I am proud of our accomplishments in 2024 and am thankful to be a part of this extraordinary team!