By Neeraj Chauhan, Chief Deputy Director of FI$Cal
With 98 percent of the FI$Cal system completed and 20,000 users transacting in the system, now seems a good time to take stock of where we are with the remaining project build-out.
Under Special Project Report 8, we are on a path to finish development and deployment of the system by July 2020. The remaining State Controller’s Office milestones introduce new functionality that, when fully implemented, will make FI$Cal the state book of record to be used by SCO in producing the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and other statewide reporting.
We are in the middle of a series of releases that provide interfaces between the FI$Cal system and SCO legacy systems to keep transactions and fund balances in sync. We are intentionally breaking these releases into smaller chunks to ease the burden on departments.
In September we deployed a solution that enforces Federal Trust Fund controls for all future transactions. Last Friday, September 30, we deployed three bank statement features that automate offset processing and allow for complete bank statement generation within the FI$Cal system.
On November 4, we plan to begin a months-long rollout that will allow for the Plan of Financial Adjustment (PFA) to be validated in the system. This is a big release because it will affect payment processing and month-end close for departments if PFAs and allocations are not aligned.
From November through March 2020, we will bring in departments to show them the changes and help them sync up their PFAs with SCO, identify errors and otherwise test the changes. We realize this will be a heavy lift for users, which is why we will provide comprehensive training and support to departments.
In 2020 we will also implement Milestones 4 and 5. Milestone 4 functionality will allow SCO’s legacy system and FI$Cal system ledgers to run in tandem on a daily basis, which is the first step for a statewide ledger to be produced using the FI$Cal system.
I know that for departments a lot is coming, but we are here to help you as you transition to using these new features.