Achieving Our Mission Through Management Excellence

Business Innovations To Support Our Workforce

**\
**A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center in
Phoenix, Arizona

**February 24, 2005**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The U.S. Department of the Interior presents live from the
Bureau of Land Management National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona,
\"Achieving Our Mission Through Management Excellence, Business
Innovations to Support Our Workforce.\" And now the host of your
program, Nina Hatfield.\
\
N. Hatfield: Hello, I\'m Nina Rose Hatfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Business Management at Wildland Fire and at the Department of the
Interior and welcome to our broadcast on improving business practices
within DOI. For the next few minutes we\'re going to take you on a
journey, our journey toward management excellence. All of us have felt
frustrated that we have to deal with too many passwords, increasing
requirements for accountability and work processes that are geared to
old systems. Just listen to this one manager\'s view of the world.\
\
In the National Park Service when we talk about financial management we
use a half dozen or so different systems, and when we are out in the
field trying to use these different systems, each one of them has a
different look and feel. We just tend to put the same information in
some cases into the same system \-- or into different systems multiple
times. As a park manager, I think one of the most frustrating aspects of
the job that I faced was not only trying to get all of our different
people trained in all of the different business systems that we use, but
also to try to respond to requests for information from Washington,
whether the information came from Congress or OMB or the department or
the Park Service itself. Almost weekly we faced data calls asking us to
extract data from systems and turn into it a format that somebody else
wants and send it on up the pipeline. It\'s frustrating because we know
that this data resides in central databases and I guess we feel that we
could be a lot more efficient if folks could get the data out of the
systems themselves instead of burdening the field with these many, many
data calls.\
\
N. Hatfield: Now, Don Striker from the Park Service has shared with us
some of the frustrations we\'ve all experienced and in addition these
situations make our jobs difficult and in providing the services our
customers deserve. During today\'s program we will invite you to ask our
panelists questions and share your experiences about interior\'s quest
for management excellence. You can contact us by phone or faxing using
the numbers that are on your screen. Please feel free to fax us at any
time. During our presentation we will be opening the phone lines to take
your questions. We also have reserved some time at the end of our
program For a general question and answer segment and we will say on the
air as large as we can to answer questions that you may have. Now,
joining me here in Phoenix is Elaine Marquis-Brong, the Bureau of Land
Management Oregon and State Director.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: I\'m glad to be here.\
\
N. Hatfield: Also joining us is Robert Doyle, the U.S. Geological
Survey\'s Deputy Director. Welcome, Bob.\
\
R. Doyle: Good morning, Nina, pleased to be here.\
\
N. Hatfield: Completing our studio panel is Debra Sonderman, Director of
Acquisition and Property Management group at the Department of the
Interior. Hi, Debra.\
\
D. Sonderman: Good morning, Nina.\
\
N. Hatfield: Coming to us live from Shepherdstown, West Virginia, we\'re
especially honored to be joined by Lynn Scarlett, Assistant Secretary
for Policy Management and Budget at the Department of the Interior and
the presidential designee to become Interior\'s Deputy Secretary. Good
morning, Lynn.\
\
L. Scarlett: Good morning, Nina.\
\
N. Hatfield: It\'s great to have you with us. Lynn is responsible for
all management, budget and other administrative activities of the
department. In addition to serving as the principal policy advisor to
the secretary, Lynn is interior\'s chief financial officer and chief
human capital officer. Along with the secretary, Lynn has been a driving
force for management excellence within the department. She\'s worked
closely with the secretary and our bureau directors to foster an
environment of continuous improvement. So, Lynn, why don\'t you get us
started by talking a little bit about our overall management excellence
objectives.\
\
L. Scarlett: Thanks, Nina. Good to be with you this morning. Management
excellence lies at the heart of serving the public well. President Bush
has challenged each of us to deliver the best value that we can for the
American people. His management agenda focuses on specific areas for
government-wide improvement. These include strategic management of human
resources, budget and performance integration, improved financial
performance, expanded electronic government and efficiency through
competitive sourcing. Our mission at interior connects us closely to
those we serve, with a full-time workforce of 70,000 employees and
current appropriations and permanent funding of \$15 billion, we manage
many of this nation\'s special natural, cultural and historic places.
These include parks, refuges and recreation areas for public enjoyment.
We manage and provide access to many of the nation\'s natural resources.
We enhance scientific understanding and we fulfill America\'s trust and
other responsibilities to native people. We provide hydropower to the
western United States and deliver water to more than 31 million
Americans. Our stewardship responsibilities extend from Mount Rushmore
to the Everglades and encompass petroglyphs, pioneer trails and historic
museum pieces ranging from airplanes to clothing. We annually collect as
much as \$13 billion in revenue from the lands and recreation areas that
we manage, larger than our discretionary budget request for 2006.
Fulfilling all these responsibilities is challenging. How well we do our
jobs can affect the lives of each and every American. It affects whether
farmers have water. It contributes to our ability to warm our homes and
drive to see family and friends. It affects whether our children and
grandchildren will enjoy the beautiful vistas of the Grand Canyon. It
influences whether eagles will soar and fish will thrive in our waters
but various challenges could impair our ability to carry out our diverse
responsibilities.

For example, interior maintains more than thundershower,000 buildings,
4200 bridges and tunnels, 126,000 miles of highways and roads and 4,500
historic trails. Past federal investments have not kept pace with
challenges that result from increased visitation to public lands or from
aging and deteriorating facilities, many of which are historic. Yet the
deterioration of these facilities can adversely impact public health and
safety. It can reduce employee morale and productivity. It can increase
the need for costly major repairs or early replacement of structures and
equipment, underscoring the importance every our finding ways to meet
maintenance backlog challenges. Our increasing role in homeland
security, law enforcement and emergency management responsibilities to
protect people, natural, cultural and heritage resources, dams, ICONS
and monuments demands our continued vigilance. Working with our partners
in federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement security,
intelligence and emergency management is essential in our carrying out
our responsibilities.

The American people continue to demand more from interior. At the same
time, Congress in recent years has pass add number of laws to ensure
better business management practices, improved efficiency, financial
integrity and mission accountability. Coming one resource to fund such
improvements is especially challenging in light of the public\'s desire
for more on the ground services. We also need to meet the president\'s
commitment to have the deficit by 2009. How can we achieve results for
America in such a complex and changing world of increased urbanization,
new law enforcement and security challenges, increased public demands
for improved service and accountability and that aging infrastructure?
Meeting these challenges requires new thinking and new ways of doing
business. We must work smarter using new tools and technologies within
the confines of available funds.

Today you will hear several stories about innovations we\'ve applied at
the Department of the Interior to meet these challenges that face us
today and into the future. Think of these innovations as mile posts in
our journey. As Department of the Interior employees, we take great
pride in our core mission. We should also be equally engaged in the
business operations that support that mission. Among the examples that
follow are some best practices of the public and private sectors. These
efforts are saving money, they\'re improving service to the public,
they\'re helping us recruit and retain the best workers. Most
importantly, they will ensure that we can protect America\'s public
lands and resources, furnish recreational opportunities, foster sound
use of land, mineral, energy and water resources, use science to inform
decision making and serve communities into the 21st century and beyond.
Nye thank you, back to you.

N. Hatfield: Well, thank you, Lynn, for those thoughts. I know that as
we look at the president\'s management agenda one of the items on that
agenda, the competitive sourcing initiatives is one that causes some
trepidation among managers and employees. Could you share with us a few
thoughts about how that has been working at interior?\
\
L. Scarlett: Yes, Nina. There\'s a lot of confusion about competitive
sourcing. Sometimes it\'s mistaken to be about outsourcing or
privatization, but, in fact, competitive sourcing is a way of putting
our fingers on our pulse and saying, are we the best we can be? For
example, should we do things exactly as we\'re currently doing them?
Should we perhaps work with partners? Should we reorganize or revise our
structure to meet the 21st century needs that face us? So competitive
sourcing is about trying to examine our current practices and ask how we
can be better, not about contracting, but rather seeing what\'s the best
that we can be. I will tell folks that in the process we\'ve undertaken
to date, in the vast majority of cases we are concluding we should
retain the services in house, sometimes with some tweaks or programmatic
changes, but our employees really are doing an awfully good job.\
\
N. Hatfield: But the examination \-- through that examination we feel
like that we have the best possible approach to the problem. Now we
would like to talk a little bit about embarking on our journey to
management excellence by applying secretary Norton\'s four key business
principles, citizen value, accountability, integration and
modernization. These principles remind us of what the public demands
from its government and complements the president\'s call for a citizen
centered government. Elaine will present some of the ways that interior
is improving our citizen value through management excellence. Elaine?\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: Thank you, Nina. Something near and dear to my heart
and what we do. By focusing on value, we\'re reminded that whatever we
do should be citizen centered and designed to add value for our
citizens. At interior we are using information technology to improve
services to the public and at the same time allow our employees to do
other priority work. A good example is interior\'s recreation one-stop
initiative. By tapping into the power of the internet to provide
potential visitors with an array of helpful information about public
lands, the department\'s recreation one-stop initiative has created a
citizen centered web portal for recreational opportunities throughout
the nation. Working with our Forest Service partners, state and local
partners, we are integrating multiple reservation systems into one
user-friendly national reservation system. In short, we are helping
frustrated citizens plan trips and make reservations through our
website, recreation.gov. Once we implement the new system, individuals
planning trips will be able to make recreation related reservations
using federal sites and the single online shopping cart.

The new service will provide valuable information ranging from entrance
fees forgiven sites, weather conditions and links to not federal
recreation partners. Another way we\'re adding value to our service is
by leveraging our resources through partnerships. Secretary Norton\'s
vision for effective performance, the four Cs, which are cooperation,
consultation and communication in the service of conservation, reflects
our goal of involving others, including communities, partners,
customers, contractors, volunteers and the interested public in carrying
out our mission. For example, we recently signed an agreement with the
boat owners association of the United States as part of a collaborative
effort to protect coral reefs and seabed grasses. By involving citizens
through education and awareness, we can do much to conserve our
extraordinary resources. The goal is to build long-term partners and
stewards of our national treasures. Partners like the wildland fire
leadership council leverage scarce resources and technology to solve
problems of mutual interest. The council comprising representatives from
interior, the Department of Agriculture, tribes, state agencies and FEMA
help coordinate fire and hazardous fuels policy. The council also
strengthens links with partners helping us work closely with
community-based firefighting units to improve wildland fire management
and reduce hazardous fuels on forests and rangelands. Last year the
council worked with communities to develop common performance measures,
common cost accounting protocols and an effective hazardous fuels
reduction program. In fact, interior and the United States Forest
Service have removed hazardous fuels from over 11 million acres since
2001. Now both agencies and communities can assess where they are
succeeding and where they are falling short in meeting fire-related
goals. Another way that we are leveraging our capacity is through our
volunteer partners.

In just 2004, over 200,000 volunteers contributed about 8.9 million
hours of time to the department at a value of about \$153 million by
working with the National Park Service, fish and wildlife service,
Bureau of Land Management, U.S. geological survey and Bureau of
Reclamation. Individuals of all ages and levels of experience contribute
valuable time to help us fulfill our recreation and conservation mission
while promoting healthy lifestyles and outdoor recreation opportunities.
Service First is another excellent example of where the Bureau of Land
Management and the Forest Service have partnered to improve service to
the public. By co-locating in the same building and by sharing services
and equipment, and by developing common business practices, both the BLM
and the Forest Service have saved millions of dollars while improving
service to customers through one-stop shopping and managing natural
resources on a landscape basis.

For example, public land activities which require a permit such as
grazing, firewood cutting, backcountry and river outfitting can now be
permitted by one agency. Historically a user was required to seek
separate permits for each agency\'s jurisdiction. In the northwest,
another example, we have migrated to one fee pass for all federal
agencies and the two state park agencies for all of the recreation
activities. Another example is in central Oregon the Deschutes and open
co-forest with the BLM Prineville office are working across landscapes
to provide consistent fuels and forest health products and produce a
manageable source of biomass over a 10-year time frame. These projects
will achieve our goals and support the biomass industries in rural
communities.

To date BLM and the Forest Service has co-located in 30 facilities and
10 states. Plans are under way to combine an additional three offices by
end of this year. The Service First story is a compelling testament to
our creativity of our employees in finding ways to manage with
excellence. Service First efforts continue to expand and include other
interior agencies such as the National Park Service and Fish & Wildlife
service in Las Vegas, California, the northwest and other places across
the country. There are many other examples where interior agencies are
using technology to do their work, leveraging resources with Barters in
and just putting the customer first. Nina, I know you want to hear from
other people so I\'ll turn it over to you.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay, Elaine. But before we move on, I would like to go
back, in the Service First initiatives that you\'ve talked about, those
are really geared toward making it easier for our external customers to
work more closely with us, within interior and with our partners, but
could you talk for a minute about how Service First might impact our
employees themselves?\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: The impacts are endless. Just upon co-locating, for
example, the regional office for region 6 and BLM in Portland
co-located, and in the very first year we realized a million dollars in
savings for space. We\'ve been together a little over three or four
years, and over time we\'ve learned how to share skills, share
employees, we\'ve tightened up our space and we\'re looking at saving
another million per year starting in \'06. Same thing with other
offices. Lakeview has the same story. We\'ve magnified our capability by
sharing employees and the creativity of the employees discover once
they\'re together is endless.\
\
N. Hatfield: And allowing us to keep dollars in on the ground programs.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: Absolutely.\
\
N. Hatfield: Great. Now we would like to turn our attention to the
second of our business principles, that of accountability. Citizens,
Congress, the office of management and budget all want to make sure that
we\'re achieving our goal and are prudent in the use of public funds. So
I would like to ask Bob, who incidentally is a very happy man on our
panel since he is a patriot fan and a Red Sox fan, to talk to us a
little bit about what we\'re doing to improve our overall
accountability. Bob?\
\
R. Doyle: Thank you, Nina. Accountability is an underlying tenet so that
we can better manage work and improve service to the public. Our goal is
also to hold managers and employees account bill for performance results
and to incorporate that accountability into the management process. We
begin with GPRA strategic plan published in 2003 which embodies our
strategic direction for the next five years. Each quarter we review and
report progress toward meeting our measured targets. The results of your
work in the field. This gives us an opportunity to make any mid-course
adjustments before the end of the performance year. Our strategic plan
like most plans is a dynamic document. We recently refined several of
our GPRA measures, collaborating with other bureaus and offices to
ensure that we are measuring the right things and that the results will
be both meaning full and useful in affecting programmatic improvement.
We\'ve also tied specific GPRA and management excellence goals and
measures to performance evaluations. This establishes a close link
between executive performance and professional results. This cascading
process not only reaffirms performance expectations but also
demonstrates to individual employees how their work contributes to
achieving the organizations mission. We\'re also taking a strategic
approach to managing our human capital. In 2003, interior completed its
first strategic human capital management plan. Now in the second year of
implementing that plan we are closing gaps in critical occupation null
areas such as management, law enforcement, Indian and financial
management. Our activity cost based management tool will also help us
enhance accountability in that October of 2003 we began developing cost
management, a tool that helps us understand the cost of doing work and
relates it to the product of our efforts that is ultimately linked to
outcomes. All interior bureaus and offices develop common definitions of
work processes, activities and performance measures. In fiscal year
2004, all interior employees began recording costs of activities to
describe the work of the department.

This data enables employees and the public to better understand what is
\-- what it costs us to deliver products and services. You can see here
on the chart that we have a traditional view of activity based costs. On
the left we have traditional costs, categorized by object class and as
you can see, about 45% of the costs are attributed to labor and another
40% of the costs. What is also apparent is \-- it\'s unclear as to what
the money was spent for. As you look to the right you can see the
activity based cost view of that same data array across a number of
activities. As you can see here, about 25% of the costs are associated
with requests for proposals. Now, what the activity based costing
information enables us to do is to see where the cost drivers are and to
identify opportunities for process improvements.

Activity based costs allows managers to assess the cost of doing
business to meet mission goals, to satisfy an OMB requirement for
efficiency measures to help us demonstrate government efficiency in the
competitive process and to provide better information on resource needs
to Congress and OMB. Some of our bureaus are also beginning to seat
benefits of the activity based cost information. For example, the office
of surface mining has used cost management to develop a comprehensive
workforce plan to more efficiently align staff with functions to be
performed. Armed with data from the cost system, OSM has restructured
staff while containing costs associated with the abandoned mine
reclamation fee program while still providing a high level of program
compliance. As one manager recently stated, cost management is the goal
in our financial systems and we\'re learning to mine it.

It is important to recognize the bar for accountability continues to
rise for all of us. For example, last year the president issued a new
executive order that requires all government agencies to be more
responsible in the management of its real property. Interior\'s making
progress toward bringing park facilities and resources into good
condition. For example, the president has committed 4.9 billion over
five years for the park facility maintenance and construction. We are
using data from condition assessments completed on our assets to serve
as a starting point to determine investments required and for
establishing performance goals to achieve an acceptable condition over
time. Interior has also drafted an asset management plan that deals with
the real property, space, fleet and maintenance. We are examining our
entire asset portfolio and evaluating assets across the entire life
cycle. We will have performance measures attached to the use of our
assets and will be part of a government-wide inventor eve property.
It\'s a big job, especially since interior is second only to defense in
the size of our asset portfolio in the diversity of assets we
management. Lastly, the Sarbanes-Oxley act established for rigorous
control measures for public and private entities and with comparable
levels of performance expectations. Consequently, OMB has revised the
internal control policy designated A123. We will need to review internal
controls for our program and financial operations so we can assure
we\'re effective and efficient in operations, that we are reliable in
our financial reporting and that we are complying with the applicable
laws and regulations. To ensure accountability we have to report on the
controls and bureau directors will have to certify the controls
reasonably assure that funds, property and other assets are safeguarded
against waste, loss and unauthorized use. We will be taking more \-- we
will talking more about these requirements in the coming months.

The bar has continued to rise for us as financial managers as well. This
year for the first time ever, the audit of interior\'s performance and
accountability report was completed 45 days after the fiscal year, a
huge improvement over the four or five months it took us just four years
ago. In addition, as a result of continued heroic efforts, interior and
all its entities received a clean audit opinion. But there is still much
more to do to assure we know how our money is being spent the results of
our efforts. Nina, in short, performance and accountability are
essential. Management systems such as FBMS and management tools such as
ABC/M and a management process to evaluate performance and
accountability provide an ability to deal with the varied and complex
management issues confronting the department today.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you, Bob. I noticed as you were talking about the
strategic plan, financial management, internal controls, I think too
frequently people think about those as being, for example, the chief
financial officer\'s responsibility and really they\'re much more widely
bound than that.\
\
R. Doyle: They are, definitely, Nina. I think to strengthen and improve
business operations you need the collective efforts of all employees in
the organization. It starts with the executive leadership down through
the managers and supervisors and down to individual employees like
scientists and support staff. I think at the survey over the years for
the last 125 years we\'ve taken a great deal of pride in our science
excellence, and we have been striving to achieve the same level of
excellence in our business operations as we do enjoy in science. So I
think in any organization strong business practices and fiscal integrity
is really the responsibility of every employee.\
\
N. Hatfield: And you\'ve all made a dramatic turnaround in terms of your
financial management over the last two years.\
\
R. Doyle: I think the leadership, the program managers all became
engaged in the process. We regained our focus on the value and
importance of fiscal integrity and I think we did a tremendous job, as I
said, it was a collective effort of a lot of folks, we did a tremendous
job in turning things around and achieving the unqualified opinion this
year.\
\
N. Hatfield: Great. Now we would like to once again remind you that we
want to take your calls and your faxes regarding the topics that we\'re
talking about, so feel free to make sure that you send us faxes . The
telephone number is on your screen now. Feel free to call or to send us
a fax. Now, our mission is multi-dimensional And our public base is very
diverse. Our bureau traditionally are operated as independent entities
but changes in our world, our budgetary constraints and the current and
future challenges have driven us to become much more cohesive as a
department. So next Debra will share with us some thoughts about
innovations and integration and modernization that are all helping us to
be more effective. Debra?\
\
D. Sonderman: Thanks, Nina. I will lead off with an example of the way
we\'ve used the concepts of integration to improve our ways of doing
business in the most wide ranging system implementation in the
department, the financial and business management system, or FBMS.
We\'re all tired of logging in and out of various systems and the
problems we all encounter with juggling too many passwords. FBMS will
eliminate those duplicate systems, eliminate the need to enter the same
data many, many times, as well as eliminate a number of those pesky
passwords. Here\'s an example of this issue from the U.S. geological
survey.\
\
Hi, my name is David bolt. I work for the U.S. geological survey in rest
ton, Virginia. I manage a computer system that supplies web information
from the USGS to the public that includes volcano information, flood
information, earthquake information, information to recreationalists.
That system is composed of completely redundant systems across the
country and each one of those systems has 10 different computers on it.
That\'s 30 systems. Because of security requirements, I can\'t log
directly in as root or as administrator. I have to log in as myself.
That means I have 60 passwords I have to track and now I have to change
them every 90 days. What I used to do is I had a cartoon that I liked
and on the back it had all my passwords. There wasn\'t room on this for
60 passwords. So then I started using my PDA, personal digital
assistant, so I would just page down and I would read the passwords out.
That didn\'t work very well, either. Eventually I moved to a piece of
software on my computer that stores my passwords for me encrypted. Even
so it\'s hard keeping track of all them. I have to bring up this piece
of software every time I need it, I have to make sure I have the
software and copies of my data on my laptop if I travel, I have to have
it at home, I have different computers at home, so I have to have them
on each of the different computers I have at home. It\'s very difficult
to keep track of all that information.\
\
D. Sonderman: Problems like day individuals are the reason why signing
on once is one of the objectives for FBMS. FBMS is the cornerstone of a
fully integrated business management system supporting the Department of
the Interior as a world-class organization acknowledged for management
excellence and effective mission delivery. As we\'ve discussed, the
Department of the Interior is a vast and complex organization. FBMS will
enable us to standardize our business processes, standardize data
elements and reporting requirements. FBMS will create a single system
that includes the following functional areas: financial assistance,
that\'s grants and cooperative agreements; core financials; accounts
payable and receivable; funds management and general ledger; budget
formulation and planning; acquisition; property, including personal
property, real property and fleet management; travel and enterprise
management information. FBMS will enable us to build a more integrated
organization so bureaus can better serve their customers while
accomplishing their unique missions. Currently there are many complex
systems varying by bureau and few are integrated. Let\'s hear from
Rayleen Cruz, the department\'s functional lead for property on the FBMS
project.\
\
My bureau has about 20 different property systems or databases that we
use for personal property, fleet management and real property. I have to
enter a lot of the same data into awful those systems. If the truth were
told, they probably don\'t all agree. We had to create all those
different systems because one system wasn\'t available that met all of
our business needs. Across the Department of Interior there are nearly
160 different property systems. It would save property managers a lot of
time if we just had one system that we could enter the data into and
have it all available there. That way I could get all the information I
needed without having to go to all those different systems, and I
wouldn\'t have to call another office and have them run a report for
me.\
\
D. Sonderman: It\'s easy to see why we\'ve had a material weakness in
property management at the department. Just think about the amount of
time we have to spend reconciling the data in those systems and then
reconciling that data with the financial system. Our business systems
are on different platforms using different software. We\'re operating
about 26 different financial system instances across the department in
this manner. Many of our systems are old, use outdated technology and
our major finance and acquisition systems are no longer supported by
their developers, increasing our cost for operations and maintenance.
We\'ve already identified about 80 systems across the department that
can be retired with the implementation of FBMS. So what are the benefits
of the financial and business management system to interior field
offices?

Today field office managers are using a variety of automated unrelated
systems to administer the business of DOI. FBMS will provide you budget,
performance, cost and other business data in one place updated daily.
After implementation, the field will begin to realize that they can
spend less time on administrative duties and more time on DOI\'s program
functions. When FBMS users, regardless of what bureau or office they
belong to, need to locate available firefighting equipment and other
related property quickly, they will be able to because all DOI will be
on one system. Program managers will have the capability to track their
particular projects in more depth if they want to. They\'ll be able to
assign budget amounts, track and assign resources, time line the
projects and be notified through an e-mail or project status on their
desk tops if the project is almost out of funds. FBMS users who travel
will find that their travel order and voucher will be approved and paid
through the paperless E travel system. Even travel charge card
transactions will systematically appear on the field manager\'s
electronic voucher by the time they return to the office. With only a
few clicks on the voucher, it will be sent to the supervisor for
electronic signature. A field manager would be able to determine their
spending progress more effectively and at their desktop.

In today\'s world managers are being asked to monitor their budgets more
closely. In the FBMS world, all transactions, including payroll
balances, are integrated into one information repository. So actual and
complete balance sheets can be created with one query. If the local
manager wishes to have a query created for them, then that\'s possible
so they can see their account balances with a single action at their
desktop. The result is better management of available resources,
especially when they\'re presented with unplanned expenses or local
emergencies or when a quick response is required. Once implemented the
financial and business management system will also re to say the need
for field offices to reconcile information in different systems that do
not share data. Now an acquisition goes into one system, the financial
information goes into another system, and the property record may go
into multiple systems. With FBMS, an acquisition would trigger a
financial record and a property record all as a result of the single
entry. And then you\'ll be able to get a report about that from the
management information system. The future process is going to be easier,
more accurate and save a lot of time. FBMS involves multiple
deployments.

The three major ones I\'m going to talk about today are core financials,
property, acquisition, permanent change of station and equipment and
management scheduled for October of 2005. The Fish & Wildlife service,
National Park Service and office of the secretary will go live with all
functional areas in October 2006. We\'ll deploy all functional areas to
the U.S. geological survey, Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Indian
Affairs in October 2007. Employees who use the system as part of their
jobs will be trained just before the system goes live. The FBMS training
team has developed a full training curriculum with input from bureau
users. The training team is working closely with supervisors to develop
and deliver timely and comprehensive training through both
instructor-led and web-based instruction. Currently bureaus have
identified FBMS super users in every functional area. Super users are
different from other end users in that they\'re an integral part of the
FBMS project team and will ultimately become instructors.

After the system becomes operational, the FBMS help desk will be
available to assist employees that are using the system. Until FBMS is
completely deployed and fully operational, the FBMS team will continue
to keep you updated about the project, its processes and
accomplishments. One great way to learn more about FBMS is to visit the
website at\... For additional information pertaining to your bureau,
contact your bureau lead. They are working with the FBMS project
management office, functional leads for each business area, and the FBMS
executive steering committee to shape the project direction to ensure
that FBMS will meet bureau business needs.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you, Debra. I know that dealing with passwords and
trying to be more integrated are not just unique to FBMS. So could you
talk just for a few minutes about other initiatives like the enterprise
services network and active directive and how they may impact FBMS.\
\
D. Sonderman: Sure. I will be great to. Those are great examples of how
the CIO community is working with the financial and business community
to make sure that we have the technical infrastructure in place for
these projects. Active directory is a database that has information
about users, like your name and your password, and the active directory
project will link all of those databases together so that for projects
like the financial and business management system or the IMARS system
that the law enforcement community is developing will have a single
source to go to, to get information to be able to authenticate that you
are a legitimate user for the system. The enterprise services network
project within FBMS, we like to refer to ESN as the highway on which the
FBMS project will ride. ESN is a project that moves our existing 33
internet points of presence down to 5. We\'re consolidating those into
five locations. And then other aspects of the ESN project will create a
department\--wide intranet that we will be able to use to communicate
with each other for projects like FBMS and e-mail.\
\
N. Hatfield: So we\'ll be more secure and be able to work more
efficiently.\
\
D. Sonderman: Absolutely.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you, Debra. Again, we would like to take a few
minutes to answer any questions you may have. So please feel free to
give us a call or send us a fax. I would like \-- I have several
questions now coming from you out there, and I would like to turn to
Lynn for a minute. This question involves the budget that in fiscal year
we\'ve heard that in fiscal year 2006 and 2007 that the budget for
interior is essentially flat or reduced and how is DOI planning to deal
with that?\
\
L. Scarlett: Yes, Nina, of course, it\'s always challenging when we have
a flat budget and yet growing needs and demands at the department, but
some of the very things that we\'re talking about today are designed to
help us deliver the services that we have smarter, more effectively and
at less cost. The enterprise services network, for example, should be
saving us ultimately a lot of money in the information technology arena.
Ultimately as we move towards the financial and business management
system migration that, too, should be able to enable us to turn some
systems off and therefore save some dollars. We are facing some
challenges on the budget front but I\'m pleased to same the budget level
we have is fully funding all our uncontrollable. That\'s been a number
one goal for the department for a number of years. That enables us to
keep paying the people, keeping them onboard and we\'ll have to find
ways to work smarter. I do want to add one of the things that Elaine
talked about, and that is the incredible \-- incredible importance of
partnerships. The Service First is a way to share space, share services
and, therefore, with those dollars we have leverage them to get job done
even when those activities and responsibilities are increasing.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you, Lynn. Now we have a call from Judy in Arizona.
So, Judy, what would you like to ask?\
\
Caller: I\'d like to ask if there\'s ever going to be any integration
between the systems that we\'ve put in for the human resources cost,
FPPS with FBMS so we come one human resource costs, the personnel costs,
for some of our project stuff and the integration with our personnel
stuff.\
\
D. Sonderman: This is Debra Sonderman. I will be glad to answer that.
The short answer to your question is absolutely. An interface between
FPPS and FBMS has been one of the fundamental design requirements for
the implementation of FBMS. And we\'re looking at in that a couple of
ways to make sure that we can collect that cost information, our
activity based cost management information through FBMS and then pass
that back through our payroll system and have those actual dollars that
employees have been paid and linked back through our enterprise
management information system, which we call the business warehouse in
FBMS. So those two will definitely be linked together.\
\
N. Hatfield: While we\'re talking about that, Debra, we have a fax from
John in glacier national park, and he would like to know about how the
FBMS will be integrated with the facilities management system max mow.
Could you address that for a moment.\
\
D. Sonderman: Sure. MAXIMO is another key information technology system
in the department, and it brings us a lot of value in tracking work
orders and specific work activities to assets. Again, the MAXIMO \--
interface with MAXIMO was one of our basic design requirements for FBMS
and we\'ll be implementing that in phases over the next couple of years,
but what we will do in FBMS is have our property inventory, Rayleen
talked about all those multiple property systems we currently have in
place, FBMS will be the system of record for the property inventory, but
we will have a two-way interface with MAXIMO so that when we acquire a
new piece of property through FBMS, that will be fed over to MAXIMO so
when that an employee in a park or a refuge sees a new piece of
equipment on the ground and they needed to do maintenance or other
activities on that, that will come to them through MAXIMO, they will be
able to record the work activities in MAXIMO, and then again pass that
back through a combination of the FPPS interface and the direct MAXIMO
interface.\
\
N. Hatfield: Great. Bob?\
\
R. Doyle: Might also add that while MAXIMO will interface with FBMS, it
addresses interior owned properties, and so we\'ll also be including
within FBMS the leased properties, the GSA database as well as the
interior leased facilities. It will be a comprehensive database that
covers all of our assets.\
\
N. Hatfield: Which will be a great environment for us to be in. Now we
have a call from Tim in Montana. He sounds like he has a pretty basic
question. Tim? Are you there?\
\
Caller: Hello, thank you. I applaud the effort to centralize and
consolidate these systems, but as the wide area network is continually
used for many systems, even though we\'re going to be eliminating some,
are there any assurances FBMS will be designed such it will be very
user-friendly for those field offices that have limited bandwidth and
infrastructure?\
\
D. Sonderman: One of the key components of the FBMS implementation has
been the technical infrastructure, the technological infrastructure to
make it possible to actually bring to fruition this vision of a single
system, and we know that getting FBMS out to the last mile is a key area
that we continue to focus on. That\'s one reason that we actually hired
a full-time chief technology officer just for the FBMS project. He\'s
working very closely with colleagues in the CIO community to make sure
that we do things like infrastructure testing, technical infrastructure
testing for FBMS to ensure that we can effectively and timely deploy the
system out to \-- whether it\'s a park a refuge, a field station
somewhere, and that\'s one of the things that is on our critical path
for testing and continuing to make sure that we do meet your
requirements.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. If we could turn away from FBMS just for a minute, by
like to go back to Lynn in West Virginia, and, Lynn, we have several
questions from different bureaus wanting to know about what we\'re going
to do in interior to deal with telecommuting over the next several
years. Do you have some thoughts on telecommuting?\
\
L. Scarlett: Yes, Nina. Telecommuting obviously offers an enormous
opportunity for many of our employees. I actually in my former job
worked at what I might characterize as a virtual office. All of my staff
worked from their homes across the United States and we coordinated
through teleconferencing and other tools that modern technology allowed.
So I\'m a big champion of teleconferencing. There are government-wide
proposals and indeed guidelines out now requiring agencies make
available telecommuting opportunities where it\'s appropriate. Interior
is working on those, and each of our bureaus human resource staffs are
continuing to work on that. We have a lot of work to go. Thus far
interior is kind of at the bottom of the federal agencies in terms of
having moved forward. We do have some challenges. We have employees at
2,400 locations across this nation, and many of them are actually folks
at refuges or parks or specific heritage sites where they have to be out
on the ground at that site and, of course, telecommuting is really not
an option. On the other hand, we have a number of offices in
Albuquerque, Phoenix, Denver, the Washington D.C. area where we have
large numbers of employees in office buildings for whom telecommuting
might well be appropriate. So we will be rolling out more telecommuting
guidelines over the next months.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Great. Now we have a question for Elaine. Be
interesting about whether or not this question came from Oregon and
Washington, Elaine but the question is how that Oregon/Washington is
preparing for the implementation of FBMS. Obviously the changed
management piece of trying to prepare for a major initiative like this
is very important and BLM is going to be one of the first bureaus to
come up on FBMS. Could you address a little bit about what you\'re doing
in terms of change management?\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: Well, it\'s a critical question and it\'s something
we\'re struggling to get ready for and be in time. This is moving very
quickly. We\'re transitioning at the end and at the beginning of fiscal
years. So we\'ll be closing out one year while bringing on a new year
and a totally new system. We\'ve devoted our top users to this effort to
help us strategize how we will move forward and be effective and be
successful because not being successful I don\'t think is an option.
Myself and our leadership is going to be right up front and
knowledgeable this as we move ahead because we need to understand what
the components are, what they require, manage the workload for our folks
as we\'re going through the transition. So I guess the easiest answer is
we\'re going to stay real close with it and it will become probably all
of our jobs.\
\
N. Hatfield: Debra, in that context, can you talk a little bit about
what you\'re doing in terms of roll modeling, in terms of working with
individual employees on how the system might impact them.\
\
D. Sonderman: Sure. One of the things that \-- we know that people do
their jobs in a certain way today and that some of those steps are going
to be different in the future. One of the things that I think it\'s
important to keep in mind is that we\'re not changing any of the basic
laws or regulations that we have to comply with when we implement FBMS.
So, you know, if we\'re required to have a travel voucher or a travel
authorization, we\'re still going to have those things. They\'ll just
look different and be processed in a different way from how we do them
today. The role mapping process that you asked about is a process where
our change management team is meeting with managers in each bureau to go
through with them how their employees currently work today and then map
those steps to how the process will be done in FBMS. This will help the
managers understand \-- in some cases there may be new steps that an
employee has to do because, remember, FBMS is an integrated system. So
they may have to record additional information at one point in the
process that has in the past been somebody else\'s responsibility. But
we\'ll work through that on each role with the managers in the field so
that they can then use that with their employees to communicate how
their jobs are going to be different in the future.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: I\'m glad to hear that, Debra. Usually the technical
people get trained and the managers are left at the end of the process
to try to understand what this is, and I think in order to be successful
the managers need that training up front, and I know we have already
scheduled all of our training rooms for this time period and transition
in anticipation of a lot of training and I\'m glad to hear you say
managers are included in that.\
\
N. Hatfield: Shall and, Lynn, it seems to me as we talk about these
change issues, FBMS being certainly a major one, that there are
certainly impacts on the workforce that we have to plan for throughout
the department. Do you have any thoughts on that?\
\
L. Scarlett: Well, that\'s right, Nina. We\'re all aware a few years ago
we put together a human capital strategic plan. That plan asked: what
are the drivers that will be changing the context in which our workforce
operates over the next couple of years. Some of those drivers include
these technological and process changes, the changes as we integrate our
information systems, the need and indeed the demand by Congress that we
upgrade and enhance our ability to undertake financial management. So on
the one hand, we may see changes in terms of the kinds of skill sets
employees need, and that means that we\'ll have to put forth that
training so that they have those skills to utilize new systems and or in
some instances to utilize new skills altogether.

We think of minerals management service as it engages in royalty in
kind, for example, rather than the old-fashioned receiving its royalties
through monies that are audited. That requires a different kind of
person. If you do royalty in kind, it means you need a person that is a
marketer, not simply an accountant. Well, these financial business and
management system migration changes may mean that we\'re consolidating
some people, therefore we\'ll move people from current technological
operations or data entry into other kinds of jobs.

That\'s part of the workforce planning process. It needs to be fully
integrated into the technological side of this effort so that we have
the right people in the right place with the right skills at the right
time.\
\
N. Hatfield: Absolutely. So now we have some other questions that I
think are \-- that go on in terms of this role issue for our employees
and, Bob, I would like to turn to you and let you respond to this
question from the outer banks. The question really is: are we using land
management funds to feed a data machine and as a result are we becoming
financial managers instead of land managers?\
\
R. Doyle: I know we\'ve talked a lot about financial management and
financial responsibility. The mission of this department is natural
resource management, and we all are aware of that. What we\'re really
talking about raising the level of consciousness on the part of program
managers and field managers about our responsibility to properly account
for and spend the funds we have been entrusted to. We\'ve seen on the
private side what\'s happened with Enron and global crossing and MCI and
we\'ve seen how there has been erosion of public trust in those
companies, and the clear measure for that is the value of the shares in
those companies, how it has significantly declined and involves a lot of
money that\'s been lost because shareholders have lost faith in the
companies because of their inability to manage their finances. I think
the same, too, the public has an expectation on the public side that we
in government have an equally responsibility \-- an equal responsibility
to manage the funds we\'ve \-- that have been entrust to do us. So what
we\'re talking about here, whether it\'s financial business management
system or cost management or property management systems, is our ability
in the public sector to generate and in gender some trust on the part of
the public that we are responsible managers and responsible stewards of
the taxpayers\' funds. So I think it\'s not one or the other. I think we
expect all our program managers to be fiscally responsible for the funds
that they\'ve been entrusted in support of the programs and the mission
of their organization.\
\
D. Sonderman: I think another aspect of that is the transparency we will
have in the future so that not just we but the public can understand
what \-- how we\'re spending the money, these public funds that we\'re
entrusted with, and help us \-- give us feedback about whether we\'re
spending it on the right things, and that is another key issue that
raising the bar on financial management gives to us.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: I would just like to add \-- this is dear \-- near and
dear to me since BLM has already been using a cost management system,
though it is not fully integrated with the labor and other costs,
they\'re all separate. So I\'m looking forward to FBMS making our jobs a
lot easier to actually see what it\'s costing us to do our work, and
we\'ve been very successful with Congress, OMB, to absolutely lay out
what it costs to do the work that we do and they understand. It\'s not
hidden. It is transparent. And there\'s new argument. So the decision
space is very clear, and I think our managers are doing a much better
job in the end of managing because it\'s real-time data and it lets us
know, hey, if my neighbor is doing a lot cheaper, I better find out how
they\'re doing this. So it\'s continual improvement of our processes and
our business practices, and I look forward to having this integrated and
maybe using it more fully.\
\
N. Hatfield: When you have it \-- that situation, it\'s not that you\'re
talking about one set of data and somebody in Washington\'s talking
about another set of data, you can actually talk about what does the
data mean to me as opposed to what is the data. I, too, am looking
forward to that aspect of FBMS. We have a question from the Park Service
in loyal, and they are wondering about will all the integrated
functional systems available through FBMS be fully used by all bureaus
or will the use of the FBMS system be determined by each bureau? Debra,
you can take that and maybe Lynn would like to respond to that also.\
\
D. Sonderman: Sure, the answer to the question is that all functions
will be used by all. One of our key business goals for FBMS is to
standardize our business processes across the department, and not just
standardize the business processes but standardize the technology we\'re
using to carry out those business processes across the department. This
is one of the things, for example, in the fire program where we\'ve been
trying to help each other in the contracting area to award more
contracts for hazardous fuel removal, and we had to really do KLUDGE
processes right now so that BLM could help the Park Service or Fish &
Wildlife could help BIA or vice versa. In the future when we\'re all in
one system, we will have the opportunity to share administrative work
across bureaus, you know in appropriately secure way, but we\'re all
going to use all of it.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Lynn, I think that really raises a larger issue in
terms of just integration of systems that we\'re trying to do across the
department and the importance of that.\
\
L. Scarlett: Yes, Nina, but I would like to actually link two threads of
the discussion. Go back to the comment a caller made earlier about the
importance every our unique missions and that that really is where the
passions of so many of our employees lie, and, of course, it is that
mission that does inspire us and that does serve America, and I think
it\'s important to consider our management systems more as the conduit
or the foundation through which we\'re able to deliver those specific
missions that we have each of our bureaus have. Now, as it relates to
the common systems, we have so many management activities that are
common across all of our agencies, and so to be able to use an
integrated system and the same system allows us to do some of the sorts
of things that Debra Sonderman just described in terms of contracting,
for example, for fuels treatment project or fire management activities,
but I want to reassure folks that getting a common set of business
systems and systems that are integrated is not about somehow diminishing
the individual and unique character or the individual and unique mission
of each of our bureaus. Those individual missions remain the same. It\'s
important that each of those agencies focus on that specific mission,
but this is about finding ways to work smarter and work together where
we can on a common business management foundation.\
\
N. Hatfield: Well, that\'s great. By like to turn now to another topic
that one of our BLMers in Denver has asked about, and that is as we know
the new travel online booking engine is going to be available next week,
Debra, and how will that engine implement E-travel and how will that
improve our management excellence?

D. Sonderman: Great question. I think one of the things that we\'ve been
talking about is what our customers expect from us and the public
expects to be able to interact with us with modern tools. Well, we
should have that same standard of desire for carrying out our processes
for our own employees, and that\'s one thing that I think we will see
with the online booking engine component of E-travel. It is very, very
similar to what you would do if you were going online to ORBITZ or
Travelocity or any of the commercial services, the difference being that
it brings in the specific rules that are required for federal travelers,
such as the city payer program contract fares. So I think that this is
really a great way that we\'re going to be able to bring better tools to
our employees so that they can work faster, not have to be bogged down
with some of the paper work, and then there\'s the added benefit, as
well as that the transaction costs for doing self-booking is about \$10
a transaction where actually using an agent to do a reservation for you
is about \$25 a transaction. So we\'ll save some administrative dollars
by moving to that process as well.\
\
N. Hatfield: Great. It mirrors to some extent, I think, what we see on
the private sector side.\
\
D. Sonderman: Absolutely.\
\
N. Hatfield: It\'s one of those instances, I think, in which we\'re
picking up from some private sector technology.\
\
R. Doyle: I think we\'re seeing it all across the department where the
public is very well skilled in E-commerce and they know what they can do
from a technological standpoint in terms of getting goods and services
from the private sector, and there\'s an expectation built in that when
they deal with the government they, too, women get the same kind of
treatment. They expect the easy access, they expect rapid response, they
expect that when they access a website, for example, at a government
agency that they can maneuver around it very easy and they can get to
what they want with a few clicks of the mouse. And they expect real time
data. So that has an impact on us in terms our infrastructure, if
somebody called \-- somebody mentioned about the bandwidth, that\'s an
issue for us, the enterprise service network, our ability to respond to
the public in a way that they\'ve been accustomed to based on their
experience in the private sector, and we should, we should as a public
organization be ready to respond, understand what challenges those
represent and what kind of investments we need to make in order to do
that.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: I would like to raise one other point that we keep
talking about our external customers, clients and the people we work
with. This integrated system that we\'re moving into, for me, is so
important for our internal customers. Our own employees have the same
expectations. They need information, they need data, they need it fast
and they need it integrated and they want to maneuver through the
internet the same way. They want it accessible. I see that as a way of
building our capacity at a greater level than we have in the past.
Debra, I have a question for you, and I don\'t want to put you on the
spot, but I\'m interested, we\'re not the first organization, agency or
department to try to integrate our systems. Others have gone before us,
and there are a lot of questions throughout. How have they done?

How are we learning from them? Are we using that information to help us
move forward? How are we proceeding?\
\
D. Sonderman: Good question. First, before we actually \-- we spent
about five years in the planning for the financial and business
management system project, and as part of that planning we talked to
other agencies and many companies in the private sector to learn from
them what areas people made mistakes in, what areas we needed to watch
out for that we needed to build into our process to make sure we\'d be
successful. A couple of those things that were very clear to us was that
we had to commit ourselves to put the A team people onto the project and
that\'s been one of the things that I think is most rewarding for those
of us that have the privilege of working on FBMS. We asked for the A
team and our bureaus brought forth their really great people to help us
figure out how to integrate these things. It\'s not easy. I mean, we are
\-- we have bred into ourselves or grown into ourselves a bureau of
customization. So being able to look at how we do things in common and a
single way to do things is a big undertaking. So A team people, getting
top management support.

We\'ve been extremely fortunate that Lynn, our Deputy Secretary Griles
in his tenure and secretary Norton have been extremely committed to
helping us move forward with the project. Training is the other key area
where other agencies \-- or other organizations warned us that they had
problems. One of the things they told us to do was make sure that we do
end-to-end process training. We\'re accustomed to working in our stove
pipes. If I\'m an acquisition person I know how to do procurement and so
I\'m accustomed to working in that area. What we have to do for FBMS is
make sure that not just the acquisition person but the requisitioner
knows that if they need a piece of property that how they create that
initial record, it\'s going to flow all the way through the system into
that property inventory, and so we are making sure in our training that
we do end-to-end process and that we have training available online, you
know, refresher training available for people, and we\'re putting a lot
of emphasis with this role mapping on helping people understand how
important that is to our success.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. I\'d like to turn now, we have a call from Eddie in
South Dakota, who may or may not be as cold as they are in D.C., I
understand, today, but I think he has a question \-- are we still a few
minutes away from that? Okay, until Eddie comes back up, we\'re having a
slight difficulty there, we have another question from the outer banks
group, which is Fish & Wildlife and Park Service, and they\'re wanting
to know about back-up systems in place for the FBMS. What happens if the
interior internet goes down or there\'s some other possibility of
inaccessibility to the internet and have we prepared for that and
planned for that?\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: That\'s a \--\
\
D. Sonderman: That\'s a terrific question. Absolutely. In fact, our FBMS
project will ride on the corporate intranet that is being created with
the implementation of the enterprise services network. This is one of
the key things that as we looked at this notion of single sign-on that
we talked about before, getting rid of all those passwords, we knew that
that\'s a vulnerability for us. So the recommendation from the private
sector was that we actually implement FBMS through an intranet rather
than relying only on the internet. Now, the actual physical location of
the hosting for the FBMS software is at the National Business Center\'s
organization in Denver, and we will have redundancy there and failover
capability to our enterprise services center offices in Herndon where
our project office \-- one of our project offices is located, and so we
are working very closely with NBC to ensure that we \-- as we do testing
on infrastructure we\'ve got all of that available and we\'ll be
monitoring it constantly to make sure that it will be available for our
end users.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Now let\'s go to Kim, who is in West Virginia with
the Park Service, and she has a question. Kim? thank you for joining
us.\
\
Caller: Hello?\
\
N. Hatfield: Kim?\
\
Caller: I\'m here.\
\
N. Hatfield: What\'s your question?\
\
Caller: The question is with the budget shortage being what it is, where
is the funding going to come from for the training?\
\
N. Hatfield: For the training in the FBMS system. Okay. Debra, I know
you\'ve looked at the budget carefully and I\'m sure that you\'ve looked
at training as a part of that budget.\
\
D. Sonderman: Absolutely. And training is in \-- incorporated in the
budget for the FBMS project. We are funding FBMS out of the departmental
management accounts, and that is centrally funded for a reason, partly
to go back to that question that the good folks in Lowell asked, but
training is funded centrally and we will be providing standard training
using \-- we anticipate using primarily a train the trainer approach
with those superusers that I talked about before being the key
instructors for bureau classes for training on FBMS. But we\'ll have
online tools available as well so that these learning management tools
are really quite sophisticated now and give us a lot of opportunity to
help people have available at their fingertips refresher when they get
back from class and say, how was I supposed to do that? They\'ll have
that available on their screens to make sure that they know what to do.
Plus, we will require everybody, should point out, we will require all
users to pass a test before they are granted access to FBMS so that they
can \-- we can be sure that they understand what they need to do before
they actually get onto the system.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Mike, who is a BLMer in Carson city, Nevada, is
interested in knowing about who is working with us from the contract
side to build the FBMS system and what the overall cost is.\
\
D. Sonderman: Chief integration contractor is bearing point. They were
selected through a competitive process. We spent many months looking
very carefully at several companies during that competition, and bearing
point brought to us the solution that they recommended. So they\'re our
key integration partner in the FBMS initiative. The overall investment
cost, new investment dollars cost for the initiative, is about \$140
million. We expect to spend for the full implementation cost, and then
we will have operations and maintenance that will be largely funded by
redirecting what we\'re currently spending on support for FFS and IDEAS
and some of those other systems that we\'ll be able to retire with the
implementation of FBMS. Then we have a question from Oregon BLM and
wanting to know with all the emphasis of integrating with Forest
Service, is there any discussion with agricultural to use the same
financial program and an interest in working with us as we do that.
Elaine, you want to talk first about FBMS in terms of integration with
the Forest Service and Service First?\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: You know, Nina, I\'ll expand it a little wider than
that. Both departments and agencies are doing everything to be
corporately smart, and both the Forest Service and agriculture are
taking on systems, procedures, business practices to try to corporately
be the same, save dollars and we find it a challenge for us that are
integrated out in the field, and so our challenge is to try to manage
with that until the dust settle as little bit and FBMS is not any
different. I think that interior needs to get onboard, get its feet on
the ground and see how this integration works, and I think we have to
migrate over to agriculture and other land management type of agencies,
corps of engineers that works real closely with our recreation and other
agencies at that point. I don\'t know, you may have given that more
thought and discussion at your level.\
\
N. Hatfield: Well, we have actually had some conversations with
agriculture if they may be able to use what we\'re doing with FBMS, but,
Lynn, it brings to mind to me that it\'s not just us working with
agriculture, that we\'re actually working with many agencies through the
E-government initiatives and across the government.\
\
L. Scarlett: Well, that\'s right, Nina. In fact, the E-government
initiatives are just one arena in which we\'re doing some integration
across the government. But let me pause for a moment with those. A
couple of years ago at the initiative of the office of management and
budget we moved to an E-payroll system in which there are just two
providers government-wide and I\'m pleased to say that the Department of
the Interior\'s National Business Center is one of those and we\'re
actually partnered with the Department of Agriculture on that effort.
There are a number of other E-government efforts trying to integrate,
for example, E-rule making and various other endeavors, but going back
specifically to the Forest Service for a moment, perhaps an example or a
model of where we\'re beginning to work more closely with them on
fundamental management systems is in the arena of wildland fire. For
years we operated with separate accounts and different procedures and
policies. Through the wildland fire leadership council and various other
integrating efforts we are trying to get on the same page using the same
account systems. That will poise us ultimately, if there is an attempt
to integrate with the Forest Service more significantly with our
financial and business management system, we\'ll be better poised to do
that because we\'ve been putting some building blocks in place through
some of these other efforts.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Then we have a question here, again, from the Bureau
of Land Management and from Oklahoma. Their question is: how do

the impacts of implementation, for example, travel, vendor payments, all
of those things, work in \-- as we begin to do a cutover?\
\
D. Sonderman: Well, we\'re working closely on the FBMS project team that
includes bearing point and our own employees on detailed cutover plans
for each of the bureaus, and this will be true this year for the bureaus
that are going live in October and then in subsequent years for the
future bureaus. The \-- for example, for the fire program this year, the
National Park Service is going to take over the accounts payable
function for all of the fire agencies. This is something that BLM has
done in the past. But to make sure that the fire program activities
proceed uninterrupted during this transition. Park Service has stepped
on to take on that role to help BLM and its sister agencies out. That\'s
just one example of the kind of cooperation that we\'re working together
in the business areas to make sure that we can anticipate the need for
these kinds of measures in interim and get ourselves through a
comparatively smooth transition.\
\
N. Hatfield: That\'s great. I know as we\'re doing the different
initiatives we recognize our missions have individual missions and they
must continue to do their mission work but at the same time, we\'re
looking at better more efficient ways to take care of the business. But
it does strike me that while we have maybe been pretty focused on our
particular bureaus, OMB and Congress doesn\'t always look at us at USGS,
BLM but more as the Department of the Interior.\
\
R. Doyle: I think that\'s right. We\'re seeing more and more where
scorecards that are used in the management excellence area are judging
us as a department as opposed to an individual bureau, and I think OMB
is beginning to look at us more as a department rather than an
individual bureau. So I think part of what we\'re doing here in terms of
the enterprise system and trying to operate more as a corporate entity
is in response in part to that perspective from both our stakeholders,
Congress and OMB adds well as the public. I think the public views us as
Department of Interior as well, one of the interior entities, whether
it\'s the Park Service, fish or BLM, and so that means we need to be
thinking about what that really has in store for us as a corporate
entity and how we can work across organizational lines.

I think that\'s one of the \-- talked to Elaine earlier about the change
of management and some of the impacts. I think for us to begin to think
about how we work across organizational lines, horizontally as opposed
to vertically, both in the separate bureaus and I think a lot of what
we\'re talking about here is an effort to try to take better advantage
of the resources that are out there and take better advantage of the
synergies available to us when working across organizational lines and
bringing our respective strengths together to focus on a common issue or
a problem. And I think just having this discussion and seeing the
systems that we\'re working on is a commentary on how far we\'ve come
over the years in terms of looking at thing from a bureau perspective,
bureaucentric versus bureau departmental \--\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: Don\'t you feel it\'s greater than that, why are we
all so different across the federal government, and so when we couldn\'t
even be one body in interior it was very hard to explain how we could
each achieve a federal look.\
\
R. Doyle: Right. And I think the public is also demanding that because
again the public has now greater and greater access to the federal
agencies with the internet and the technology that\'s been made
available. They\'re demanding we begin to operate more as a unit, and so
if they know they can to it with BLM, why can\'t they do it with the
Park Service, Fish & Wildlife, et cetera. So they\'re beginning to ask
some common questions that push us in the direction of operating as a
corporate entity.\
\
N. Hatfield: I think that also leads to another subject that one of our
Fish & Wildlife service employees asked, and that is, really, about
leadership training, that we need to nurture our workforce to create
good managers, and I think also nurture our workforce in terms of all of
us being leaders, and that seems to me to be, Lynn, a thought of what
we\'re trying to do as we look at workforce planning across the entire
department, is try to nurture our employees and leaders to be prepared
for this future.\
\
L. Scarlett: Well, that\'s right, Nina. I love that question, actually,
because I think it focuses on the fact that interior delivers it mission
through awful its employees. We\'re not segregated into somehow the
senior managers and others but rather all employees throughout the
organization are out there in the field and delivering services to the
public. Indeed, it\'s folks in the field that often have the most
face-to-face contact with the public, and it\'s also those folks in the
field that often have to use these systems. As was stated earlier, that
training cannot simply be our financial managers getting training. It
has to be about each and every employee who is going to be utilizing
these systems getting the training and I think that\'s what we\'ve tried
to design here. I do want to go back to the discussion for a moment
about integration and talk about one more element that we haven\'t
highlighted.

We do have a wonderful team, we call it our four Cs team at interior.
Each of our agencies is represented and their\' taking that vision of
secretary Norton\'s, that conservation through cooperation,
communication, consultation and asking how do we build internally the
capacity to be better cooperators with one another as well as, of
course, with our external partners? A key thing they\'ve looked at is
actually training. Looking through our various training leaders in each
of our agencies and inventorying all our current training programs and
saying, wow, how can we work better together, how can we incorporate
some four Cs vision, whether it\'s mediation, negotiation skills, or
basic integrated business management skills so that we can work together
better? The great thing about that four Cs team, which has
representatives from each of our agencies, is that it has been doing
such good work that now the Forest Service, the army corps, the
Department of Defense, the environment Environmental Protection Agency
and others have all said, gee k we be part of that team, too? So that\'s
giving us even a great opportunity to find synergies and find ways to
leverage our efforts and work together.\
\
N. Hatfield: That\'s terrific, Lynn. Now we have some more questions
here coming to us, first, Wendy in Wyoming, would like to ask us a
question. Wendy, go ahead.

Caller: That will allow us to intersection of fees such as entrance
donations, special permits instead of using individual different types
of software that we are at present?\
\
N. Hatfield: Wendy, can you restate that question? We had a little
trouble hearing here.\
\
Caller: Yes, is there a component of this new system at present or in
the future that will allow us to enter collection every fees such as
entrance, donations, special permits, to include reconciliation and
tracking of those fees?\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay.\
\
D. Sonderman: That\'s a good question and that whole fee collection area
we know is a big issue for many employees. That\'s one of the areas
actually \-- we\'ve been working on an enterprise architecture for
financial management in the Department of the Interior and as we\'ve
looked at this notion of collections and billings and how we do the
reconciliation, that\'s an area we\'ve identified where we have
additional opportunities to figure out how to improve. The basic
components of collecting the cash and being able to he reconcile those,
we expect to include as part of FBMS and we\'re working on those
specific details as we roll that out. So that will be a future component
of FBMS, but we know that\'s a big issue and we\'re working closely with
financial managers in the bureaus and also keeping a very close
initiatives like the national recreation reservation system, one of the
components of the recreation.gov Elaine was talking about earlier to
make sure we can use things like our future America the beautiful pass
that will we\'ll be implementing in a few years to help alleviate some
of the challenges that you face on the ground with those fee
collections.\
\
N. Hatfield: Great. Thank you for your question. Now we have a question
from ALLIE in Georgia. Hello, can you tell us what you\'re wanting to
know about?\
\
Caller: Regarding PMIS, project management information system, I would
like to know if there is any integration between these two systems, FBMS
and PMIS, and if there is, where it stands in the FBMS system.\
\
N. Hatfield: That\'s the Park Service management information system?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
D. Sonderman: Right. Like the management information system at the
bureau of land management, which we\'ve been working on the FBMS team to
ensure that we have incorporated the functionality that\'s needed, the
business requirements for BLM\'s managers and other managers, we expect
to do that with most if not all of the similar bureau management
information systems. Park Service\'s PMIS system is one of those we\'re
continuing to look at and work with the Park Service to make sure we
include those business requirements and include that functionality in
FBMS and our goal would be able to be able to retire PMIS once we\'ve
implemented FBMS.\
\
Caller: Thanks.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you. Thank you for your question. Now we have another
question from Carol in California. Carol, would you go ahead?\
\
Caller: Yes, my question is, will the information on the already
existing systems that are being retired migrate over to FBMS? Or will it
all have to be reentered? I was thinking specifically of the vendor
database and IDEAS, but there\'s property and all the other systems,
too.\
\
N. Hatfield: Carol, since Debra is the owner of IDEAS, she\'s thrilled
with your question and I\'m sure she\'s waiting to give you an answer.\
\
D. Sonderman: Oh, it\'s so true. We will have \-- we are doing very
detailed data conversion plans. So, you know, the basic answer to your
question is that active data, open contracts, open purchase orders and
things like that will be converted into FBMS. There are other things
that we do currently that really are not such good business practices,
and the vendor databases that we\'re currently maintaining 26 separate
vendor databases just for ideas, and at least that number of number of
vendor databases in our financial systems, in our various financial
system instances. This really is not a good business practice.

In fact, as I\'m sure you know, there is a central contractor
registration system, one of the E-GOV components of the integrated
acquisition requirement component that we are required to use and that
vendors are required to register in. So part of the FBMS project
includes that integration or interface with the central contractor
registration database. We are working currently with OSM, MMS and BLM to
clean up their vendor databases to make sure that we don\'t actually
have somebody who is unique. You know, we have lots of instances where a
company like IBM could be entered adds I.B.M., they could be entered as
IBM, they could be entered as international business machines or many
variations on the theme. So as we convert data, we only want to convert
clean data as we call it, but we are looking carefully at that legacy
data that we need will be migrated into our business warehouse for
FBMS.\
\
N. Hatfield: It seems to me, Debra, that that\'s another example of
where the way that an individual employee may have put the data in their
legacy system will change with FBMS but in the long run we\'ll be much
more efficient and be less expensive to operate and maintain.\
\
D. Sonderman: Right.\
\
N. Hatfield: At the same time to me it does seem it puts a lot of
pressure on BLM and GS as you come up later on in the deployment cycle
to make sure that this data is clean before it moves into the new
system.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: That\'s absolutely true. Right now we are focusing on
data cleanup. All of the top users are focused on data cleanup, have
short time lines. They want this data to transfer over, so all the mock
transfers will occur and we\'ll see what \-- hopefully most of it comes
out at the other end. That gives us a chance to continue the cleanup and
maybe do some more work with the vendors to see how we make that
happen.\
\
N. Hatfield: That\'s also a good point, we\'re not just trying to do all
the transfer at one time, that we\'re testing, fixing, testing before we
go live.\
\
E. Marquis-Brong: One other point to that. When I talked to our users
last week, which gave me a lot more assurance that we might make it, I
had heard we were going to do tests and trials, and I kept thinking we
were going to maybe just do portions of each, but, no, we\'re testing
the complete transfer and sifting through data even before we start. So
that, I think s a bigger comfort for us.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Well, thank you, Carol, for that question. And now
we\'d like to turn to John, who is in Montana. John?\
\
Caller: My question, we have a blind employee who is our primary
administrative person and uses all these programs that FBMS is
replacing. I\'m wondering what kind of testing is being done or how
you\'re planning to make sure that the program is 508 compliant.\
\
D. Sonderman: excellent question. Of course, 508 compliance was a basic
requirement of the solicitation for FBMS. So, you know, it\'s a
fundamental requirement for bearing point to meet with all of the
software products that they brought to the table. But we are doing
additional testing and actually I would be delighted if we could get
your information off the air. We have a number of employees in the
Washington metropolitan area who have disabilities such as blindness who
we are asking to help us with some sort of on the side 508 testing to
make sure that we feel comfortable that we have fully complied with all
of the requirements for accessibility. So if somebody in the back room
could get your information, John, we\'d like to be in touch with you
about getting some help with additional testing for that.\
\
Caller: That sounds great. I know we would be glad \-- I know Debbie
would be glad to help out in any way.\
\
D. Sonderman: Terrific.\
\
N. Hatfield: Thank you, John. Now we would like to turn to the person
who has been our most persistent caller and that is Eddie in South
Dakota. He has had to fry two or three times to get through. We want to
make sure we can answer his question. So Eddie, you\'re on the air.\
\
Caller: Yes, just a quick question, kind of a follow-up from that last
question. I was just wondering what kind of testing has been done on
this system. There\'s so many different agencies and different programs
under one hat now, I was just wondering, even with the proper band
bandwidth, do you think we\'re going to be able to log onto this system
and get things done or are we going to have to wait for a long time with
an icon hour glass like with IDEAS now?\
\
D. Sonderman: Ouch.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay, Debra.\
\
D. Sonderman: Yes, I understand the current situation and that\'s one
reason that we\'re working so closely with the CIO community to make
sure that we link the enterprise services network implementation with
FBMS. I mentioned before we are doing infrastructure testing, and that
means that we\'re testing the speed across the network and how these
things will actually appear to people. We do have some performance
metrics for how fast the system will respond at least within the
processing capability, and we are working with your CIOs in each of the
bureaus to make sure that we have the system deployed in the way that
will get the best user experience that we can get out of FBMS. I can\'t
give you, you know, a specific response time that we\'ll guarantee
everything will turn around in at whatever speed, but I am really
confident that we will be significantly better than we are with IDEAS
and, believe me, I have \-- I have agonized over the stories of needing
to go get a cup of coffee while the database refreshes and you get the
next screen back. So I\'m well aware of the problems that we\'re trying
to improve on, and think ESN will help us get there.\
\
N. Hatfield: I understand that our first try with the ESN significantly
increased the amount \-- the \-- how quickly \--\
\
D. Sonderman: The speed.\
\
N. Hatfield: Those of us who like speed and don\'t like that hour glass
will certainly appreciate that. So thank you, Eddie. Now we have a
question from John in Washington. John? would you share with us your
question?\
\
Caller: Good morning. This is somewhat related to the earlier question
with regard to the migration of the vendor information in IDEAS. There
was a concern for the security of the database in the IDEAS system for
not only vendor information but the employee information and the ability
of the people in the field to input and update was taken away for that
concern. I was wondering with the enhancements and the access that was
described earlier if we will again be granted the ability to do updates
and \-- for example, address like parent organization as well as
subsidiaries with our vendors and so forth.\
\
D. Sonderman: That\'s a good question. The way that we anticipate
actually the \-- actually the FBMS steering committee has already made a
decision that certain information that we call master data will be
maintained on a central basis. We\'re still figuring out who that \--
who will be the employees of that central organization, but vendor
information, of course, we are required to obtain from the central
contractor registration system, and if you think about this, in the sort
of broader context of doing business, as you do in your personal life if
you do transactions over the internet, you are responsible for the
accuracy of whatever information you put in.

Likewise, with the central contractor registration database, vendors are
responsible for the accuracy of that information, and so if we go in and
change a vendor\'s information, such as their bank information, then the
liability for that \-- the accuracy of the payment or that payment
actually getting to their bank account shifts from the vendor to us, and
that\'s really not something that we should be doing. So we are looking
\-- of course, FBMS will have role-based security at the data field
level. So some individuals may have access to view information, some
individuals will have access to view and change information, but for
things like vendor tables, we know there will be instances when we have
to enter vendor records manually but we expect those to be few and far
between and our primary source will be the central contractor
registration system.\
\
N. Hatfield: Okay. Thank you, John, for that question. And now let\'s
turn back to Lynn Scarlett for some final thoughts. Lynn?\
\
L. Scarlett: Thanks, Nina. This has been really informative, I hope, to
everyone. We\'ve put a lot of miles under our feet on our journey to
management excellence, but we obviously think management excellence is
an ongoing journey, not a final destination. There\'s always something
more that we can do better. On the immediate horizon will be tracking
management of our real property by establishing a strategy to manage and
oversee interior-owned and leased assets. That\'s part of a
government-wide effort asking us to do that. These include buildings,
structures, motor vehicle fleet and office and warehouse space.

We need to optimize our use of these assets to accomplish the
department\'s mission and its diverse responsibilities. We also need to
continue our work towards ensuring that the Indian trust funds activity
and balances are recorded properly, accurately and in a timely manner.
Many of us have heard about the Indian trust programs over recent years.
Last year interior\'s office of the inspector general again identified
our responsibilities to Indian and insular area as a management
challenge. While we have made key improvements we must continue to
implement and improve policies, procedures, systems, internal controls
and achieve the goals of the department\'s comprehensive trust
management plan, and that involves a lot of our agencies, not just BIA
or the office of the special trustee.

We must also continue to correct remaining financial management
weaknesses within interior. We finished that audit within 45 days. We
got a clean opinion. But nonetheless, we still have challenges. 15
material weaknesses have been identified that require our attention. The
public will continue to expect more from us in the years to come. We
must focus on efficient and careful use and management of our resources
tour sustain these efforts we\'ll need the ongoing commitment and
creativity of every sing single one of Interior\'s employees thinking
about ways to leverage, to integrate, to work smarter. It really is the
insights, critiques, ideas of each of our employees that must find there
way into all every our discussions about management improvements and our
management initiatives and their implementation.

If these initiatives don\'t work on the ground and don\'t work well for
each and every one of our employees, then we will not have succeeded or
gotten where we need to go. The innovations we just discussed were ideas
conceived by interior employees. All of them are rooted in our own
employees and their creativity. And with only this steady stream of
innovative new processes and programs throughout the department can we
create the continual improvements and effectiveness and efficiency that
the public, I think, very legitimately demands. Each of you who are
listening today and all of your colleagues in the workplace can make a
big difference.

We would like to hear from you here both new ideas as well as how to
improve and tailor the existing ideas we have laid out on the table. We
have established an E-mail address to which you can send your ideas and
suggestions for improving the way we work at interior. You can send your
thoughts to managementexcellence@IOS.DOI.GOV. We will review your
suggestions and post status reports to our website regarding those that
we plan to pursue. You should be able to find periodic updates, again,
at WWW.DOI.GOV/PMB. Thanks very much for participating, for your
attention and all of your good ideas both today an over time.\
\
N. Hatfield: Well, thank you, Lynn. And thanks to Debra and Bob and to
Elaine for joining us today. And thanks to you for your participation
and your very good questions through your faxes and your telephone
questions. We hope that you will remember to visit our website at
WWW.DOI.gov/PMB to stay up to date on how we\'re all working together
within the Department of the Interior to achieve our mission, by
improving the way that we do our business. So long, and thanks for
watching.