Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"BLM\'s
Management Information System.\" An Overview of the Bureau\'s Primary
Source of Financial, Performance and Customer Satisfaction Information.
And Now, the Host of Your Program, Dave Brown.

Brown: Good Morning, Everyone And Welcome to Our Program on BLM\'s
Management Information System, M.I.S. for Short. Thanks for Joining Us.
We\'re Here Today to Help Bureau Employees Gain an Understanding Of
M.I.S., Our Official System For Providing Key Program, Financial and
Management Information Starting with Fy‑99. We\'ll Talk about What it
Is, How It\'s Used and Why It\'s Such a Priority in the Bureau. We Will
Also Feature the Various Components of the Total M.I.S. Earlier this
Year We Traveled to Every State in the Bureau to Provide an Overview of
M.I.S. And Other Management Tools. Known as \"Nina\'s Road Show, the
Dare to Be Different Tour 98\" The Presentation Alerted State Management
Teams to Many Changes Under Way in the Bureau N April We Held a Training
Session Here At NTC to Introduce Representatives of Each State to The
New M.I.S. Since Then, Several States Have Had Additional Training by
the Denver Business Systems Staff. In Addition, Many Staffs Are Sharing
Their Experiences with M.I.S. with Their Peers Through Practical
Applications, and That Is Where the Real Contribution Of M.I.S. Is
Realized. With M.I.S. We Will Be Able to Perform a Full Range of
Business Analysis Our Programs, Activities, Overhead, Identifying Costs
Associated With the Activities and Allow Staff to Make Better Informed
Decisions. To Take Us Through the M.I.S. Story, We Have with Us Today a
Great Panel of Our BLM Colleagues. First, I\'d like to Welcome BLM
Deputy Director Nina Hatfield, Who until January of this Year Served as
Assistant Director for Business and Fiscal Resources Where She
Championed the M.I.S. Nina Has an In‑depth Understanding of the
Management Information System Including Much of the Associated Data.
Nina, It\'s Good to Have You with Us this Morning.

Hatfield: Thank You. As You Know, Pat Shea and Pat Fry and I Believe
this System Will Be One to Provide Substantial Help to the Bureau In the
Years to Come and So I\'m Excited about the Opportunity to Participate
Today.

Brown: Super. Also Joining Us Is a Veteran of Teddy Roosevelt\'s Charge
up San Juan Hill and a Veteran of So Many BLM Program Initiatives and
Budget Wars over the Years, Roger Hildebeidel. Roger Is the Deputy
Assistant Director for Business and Fiscal Resources. We\'re Looking
Forward to Hearing From You on Your Perspectives on M.I.S.

Hildebeidel: Thanks, Dave. This Year Marks 100 Years since We Charged up
San Juan Hill and As We Were Doing That, Teddy Says to Me, \"You Know, I
Wish I Had an M.I.S., and It\'s Got to Be Y‑1.9‑k Compliant.\" So We\'re
Happy to Be Here.

Brown: Ok. And Rounding out Our Panel this Morning Is Stan Curtis. Stan
Is the Budget Officer for The Arizona State Office. Stan\'s Been
Instrumental in Helping Us Take M.I.S. from a Concept to Real Life
Practice. Welcome, Stan.

Curtis: Thanks, Dave and I\'d Also like to Thank Nina and Roger and the
Rest of the Bureau For Inviting Me Here as an End User to Demonstrate
the Management Information System.

Brown: Welcome. Before We Get Started, I\'d like To Mention to Our
Viewers That Throughout this Program We Want To Hear from You. Any Time
During this Program If Off Question or a Comment for Our Panel, Please
Give Us a Call Or Send Us a Fax Using the Numbers Provided to Your
Offices. Please Use the Standard NTC Teleconference Fax Form and Print
Your Question with a Dark Marker. At the End of Our Initial
Presentations, We\'ve Set Aside a Period of Time for Formal Question and
Answers to Take Your Phone Calls and to Discuss Your Faxes. We\'ll Let
You Noa Head of Time When We\'re about Ready to Begin Our Interactive
Segment. We\'ll Try to Get as Many of Your Questions as We Can Within
the Time Allotted. The Questions That We Don\'t Get To During Our Show
Will Be Answered via Groupwise. To Help Us Measure the Effectiveness of
this Telecast, We\'d Also like All of Our Downlink Sites to Fax Us the
Total Number of Viewers from Your Office Who Watched Today\'s Show.
Please Use the Standard BLM Satellite Network Attendance Roster and Send
it into NTC at The Conclusion of Our Program. And Now to Help Set the
Stage a Bit for Us, Nina, Would You Give Us a Thumbnail Sketch of Where
We Are and Why We Have M.I.S.?

Hatfield: Certainly, Dave. We in BLM Are the Stewards of 264 Million
Acres of Land Owned By All Americans. No Matter Where We Are or What We
Do in BLM, it Is Imperative That We Stay Focused on the Management of
Those Resources on The Ground. Now, BLMers Have Been Doing That By
Devoting Themselves to Assuring a Balance of an Appropriate Mix of
Activities, Whether It\'s Oil and Gas, Hiking Trails or Unique Sites.
But How We Manage the Resources On the Ground Has Really Been Constantly
Evolving, Particularly over the Last Several Years as We\'ve Had to Cope
with Constrained Budgets And Reduced Staffing. Now, the M.I.S. Offers
the Capability to Access and Use Information in a Way That Simply Was
Not Possible Just as Recently as Two Years Ago, and That\'s Going to
Help Us in this Environment of Constrained Budgets. But the Question
That We Have to Ask Ourselves Is ‑‑ How Do We Use That Information Cape
Bill Tea Do Make Our Work More Efficient, There by Allowing Us To Focus
More of Resources to On‑the‑ground Activity? As We Will Discuss the
M.I.S. With You Today, We Believe it Truly Offers Us an Opportunity To
Do More with less. Within BLM, We Have Been Moving To a More Systematic
Approach to Management. We\'re Integrating Our Customer Input into Our
Strategic Planning Process, Aligning Our Budget and Resources to Our
Strategic Plan and Then Improving Our Evaluation of Our Progress and
Making ‑‑ in Meeting the Commitments We Have Made in Program Delivery.
BLM Is Equipping Itself with a Variety of Modern Tools Need to Do Manage
this Vast Array of Information and Factors That Are Needed to Accomplish
its Wide‑ranging Mission Objectives. Now, the Common Thread in All of
These Different Parts of the Bureau\'s Management System Is The Need for
and the Use of Information. Our Goal Is to Provide BLMers Useful,
Mission‑critical and Business Information. In Doing So, We Can Eliminate
Redundant Systems, Data Entry, Focus Our Reporting and Provide Access to
Information Throughout The Bureau in a Low‑maintenance Manner. Now,
These Information Systems Have to Be Designed to Help Us Cope with the
Static Budget Environment in Which We All Have To Operate. Now, the
Management Information System Is Truly the next Generation of Business
Systems In the Bureau. I Anticipate That Soon Everyone In BLM Will Open
up Their Computer to a Menu of Programs Available in the Management
Information System. Once You\'ve Learned to Navigate And Create Reports
in the Financial Component of the System, You\'ll Know How to Navigate
and Create Reports Whether It\'s in Gabs, RMIS or Almrs. We See the
M.I.S. as the Core of BLM\'s System for Managing, Access and Relating
All Kinds of Programmatic and Business Information. It Will Continue to
Grow and Evolve as We Modernize Our Various Data Systems. Now, We\'re
Not Quite There Yet, But as You\'ll See Today, We\'re Well on the Way.
With the M.I.S., BLM Has Adapted The Latest and Best in Technological
Advances. There Are Three Specific Techniques That Were Used in Creating
M.I.S. That I\'d like to Touch on Today. It Was Developed by a Team of
End Users and Experts. It Was Developed Rapidly with Commercial
Off‑the‑shelf Software and it Is Delivered by The BLM Intranet. One of
the Keys in Terms of Development Was the Development Of the M.I.S. by a
Team of End Users and Technical Experts. A Couple of Weeks Ago I Had the
Chance to Be Here in Phoenix and Talk to Our Irm Community at a
Conference. During That Meeting I Mentioned That I\'m an End User Who
Looks For the Flickers on the Screen, And like Thousands of Others of
BLM End Users, I must Depend Upon the Technical Experts in BLM to Make
Sure That What Is on The Other Side of the Screen Meets My Needs, and in
this Case, with the M.I.S., BLM Field Employees and Technical Experts
Work Side by Side to Assure That The End Users\' Needs Were Met. And as
a Result, We Were Able to Build on BLM Experience, Particularly Stan\'s
with the Arizona System. The Other Thing That\'s Really Very, Very Good
in Terms of the Way That the M.I.S. Is Being Developed Is That It\'s
Rapidly Developed Using Commercial Off‑the‑shelf Software. Now,
Off‑the‑shelf Software ‑‑ My Tongue Twister for Today ‑‑ Is Really Quick
and Flexible, And Inexpensive When It\'s Compared with the Kinds of
Specially Created Software That We\'ve Dealt with in the Past, And
Certainly Offers a Lot of Benefits as We Move into New Ways of
Delivering Information To the Bureau. The Mechanism by Which We\'re
Delivering the M.I.S. Is the Intranet. Now, the Intranet Capability
Decreases the Amount of Local Maintenance That Is Necessary So That in
the Long‑term the System Is less Expensive to Operate and Maintain and
We Believe It\'s Really Critical as We Look at The Stress That Is Now on
All of Our Irm Folks Throughout the Bureau. So the Result of the Way
That The M.I.S. Is Put Together Is That Our Irm Folks Can Concentrate on
Helping End Users Maximize the Use of the System Instead of Using Their
Time in Terms of Operation and Maintenance. Now, a Benefit of the M.I.S.
Is It\'s Going to Save Us Money. It\'s Replacing Three Current Systems
Which Will Sunset at the Close of the Fiscal Year this Year. Starting
October 1, with Fiscal Year \'99, M.I.S. Will Be the Primary Source of
Our Financial Data for Internal Management and Reporting. We Will Save
Money by Eliminating Our Old Hard Copy Pg Report System, the Arizona
System and All Financial Management Reports on Microfiche. Truly, the
Possibilities for the Use of Information Are Endless With this System.

Brown: Thanks for That Helpful Overview, Nina. I\'m Curious, What Sold
You on The System a Few Years Ago?

Hatfield: Actually, it Was Probably about Two Years Ago, And I Was
Invited out by the Team That Was Working on Putting The M.I.S. Together,
and They Had a Prototype Developed That They Wanted to Demonstrate, and
What Impressed Me about the Prototype Was That it Was a Combination of
Users from Across The Bureau, One Being Stan, Who, Of Course, Can Crash
Just about Any System and Tried Really Hard To Crash the M.I.S., Wasn\'t
Quite Able to Do It, and So That Was a Good Sign and Then on the Other
Hand, We Had a Resource Area Manager Who Told Me That He Really Only
Needed to Get Information on the Financial Part of His Business about
Once A Year, and What He Liked about The Tools That We Were Using and
Putting Together, the Financial Component, Was That He Could Go In,
Learn Very Quickly What Those Tools Were, Pull the Financial Data That
He Needed Out of That System, and Use it For His Purposes Just as
Easily, Just as Effectively, as Stan Could on the High End Use at the
Time, and He Told Me, He Said, You Know, Used to Be the District Manager
Would Call Me Up and Want this Report and I\'d Scurry Around the Office
Looking For a Little Pieces of Paper and Now Using the Financial
Component of the M.I.S., He Goes In, Creates His Report, and Sends His
Report Across the Internet. So it Was That Kind of Flexibility,
Depending upon Your Expertise and Really Being Able To Learn Quickly How
to Move Around and Use the Tool That Was Very Impressive to Me. The
Other Thing Is That While We Were There, One of the Budget Officers, Who
Was in the Prototype Group Testing What They Had Done, Wanted a
Different Type of Report and They Were Very Capable of Going On Line
Quickly and Creating a Whole Different Type of Report. So it Was the
Flexibility That I Really, Really Liked. I Told Them Later I Was Glad I
Didn\'t Have My Credit Card, Because Had it Been Golf Clubs, I Have
Would Have Been Maxed Out. The Test Was Done by People Within BLM and
Was Clearly Very Easy to Use.

Brown: So Anyone with Any Level of Technical Knowledge Anywhere in the
Organization Can Become Very Comfortable with This System?

Hatfield: I Think So. I Think It\'s an Extremely Easy Tool to Use to
Chart and Move Around. Like I Say, as We Look Long Term Here, Once You
Learn to Use the Chart or Get Information, Create Reports for the
Financial Piece, Then You Can Also Use it In Almrs or Other Systems as
We Begin to Bring Them on Line. So Once You Learn How to Move Around in
It, Why, It\'s Going to Be Very Easy for Our Users.

Brown: Thanks. Now I\'d like to Turn Things over To Roger Hildebeidel,
Who Will Charge up the Hill for Us with Some of the Technical and the
Practical Aspects of M.I.S. Roger?

Hildebeidel: Thanks, Dave. I Appreciate That. I\'d like to Talk a Little
Bit About the Various Component Modules of the Management Information
System. As We Briefly Indicated on the Road Show, as We Were Visiting
All the State Offices, We\'re Building the M.I.S. in Component Pieces,
Not as a Grand Design, But Step by Step, and in this Process, We\'re
Covering the Major Business Management Processes of the Bureau. We\'re
Using this Concept So That We Can Share the Data among the Modules of
the System and Be Able to Integrate Many of Our Management Processes
That Today We Seem to Treat as Separate Stand‑alone Components. The
Other Thing That We\'re Been ‑‑ Benefit We\'re Trying to Get From the
M.I.S. Is to Focus on The Analysis, What Does the Data Mean, What Is the
Information Telling Us, and Not On, Who Has The Right Numbers to Discuss
Today. So the M.I.S. Will Give Us the Foundation Data for the Analysis.
We Originally Had the Concept of Designing Six Modules in the M.I.S.,
but as Nina Said, this Is an Evolving Process, and So We\'re Moving
along on That Trail But Doing Some Refinements as We\'ve Gone along. The
First Module, of Course, and The One That\'s the Most Advanced At this
Point Is Budget and Fund Status. That Module Has Been up and Working
since April of this Year And, as We Had it up for the Past Six Months,
It\'s Been Refined by the Users, as We\'ve Been Working with it We\'ve
Been Learning and Doing Some Things To Help Make That Module More Useful
and More Accessible to Our End Users. And Stan and Others Have Been Key
People in Helping Us Accomplish That. Within the Module, We Have Two
Sets of Features, If You Will. One Are the Predefined Queries, Which
Most Folks, and Teddy Roosevelt Would Call, a Report. And We Have
Created Some Reports In the M.I.S. That Are Accessible, and Stan Will
Demonstrate Those in a Few Minutes. But We Also Have More Importantly an
Ad Hoc Query Capability Where You the User Sitting at Your Pc, at Your
Desk, You Can Focus in and Define on Specific Pieces of Information That
Are Critical to You, Most Important to You, and Bring Those up in the
M.I.S. in The Manner, in the Structure That Helps You Do Your Job Best,
And We\'ll Also Try and Demonstrate Some of Those a Little Later on in
this Program. But this Module Was a Critical Module for Us in That,
Really, The ‑‑ it Established the Look And Feel of the Whole M.I.S. So
as You Learn the Tools and Are Able to Work Through the Budget and Fund
Status Portion Of It, You\'re Really Learning How to Use All the Other
Components of the M.I.S. as Well. The next Modules That We Developed Are
‑‑ or Had Thought About Were the Performance and Workload Measure Module
‑‑ Another Tongue Twister ‑‑ and Customer Research Module, and What
We\'re Ending up Doing Is Really Sort of Combining Those Two into a
Single Module and Have Proceeded along That Line. The System Has Been
Designed for That. The Input and Output Tools Are Available, and We Do
Have Some Prototype Portions of That Module on Line and Available to
Look At. But Most Importantly, We\'re Waiting for the Data to Enter Into
Those Modules, and in this Regard, the Response to the Fy‑99 Pawp Is
Going to Be a Key Element of That, Providing That Data. So with the Data
We Hope That by The Beginning of November this Year That Portion Will Be
up With Data Loaded and it Will Be Ready to Be Used by Everybody in The
Bureau to Help Manage the Accomplishments, Outputs and Other Performance
Measures That We Use in the Bureau. Some of the Customer Research
Information from the Last National Survey Has Already Been Loaded on the
Server and Will Be Linked Soon as a Test for Folks To Go into and
Comment On. So We Hope People Will Avail Themselves of That Opportunity
And Give Us Their Feedback on Whether That Works for Them or Not.
Another Module That Was in Our Original Plan and Has Been Worked on Is
the Property Space And Vehicles Module. The Property Data and Vehicle
Fleet Management Data Are Available Now. There Are Live Links on the
System to Get to That Information, and We\'ll Show You A Little Bit
about That Later on As Well. The Information on Office Space Data Is
Being Worked on and Should Be up by Mid‑year this Fiscal Year. The Fifth
Portion of the Modules That We\'re Talking about Is the Managerial Cost
Accounting Module, Which Deals with Our Activity‑based Costing Effort,
And We Are Developing That Module. We Are Using Our Contractor Developed
Microsoft Access Database and from That We Will Be Designing an M.I.S.
Module That Brings in All the Data from The Activity‑based Costing and
Makes it Available Across the Bureau. We\'re Scheduling to Have That up
By Mid‑year \'99, Around That Time Frame. Then the Final Original
Component of the M.I.S. Was the Collections and Billing System. This a
Phase Development Which Will Occur over Two Years. This Upcoming Fiscal
Year, 1998 ‑‑ 1999 and the Year 2000 a Lot Of Work Is under Way on That
and Design Has Been Done but it Will Kick into High Gear in 1999 and The
Collections Module Will Be Built and Should Be Operational By the End of
\'99 for That Phase. And Then in Keeping with the Evolving Nature of
this M.I.S., We Are Working on Bringing the Ideas I.d.e.a.s. System,
Which Provides Procurement Data and It\'s Part of a Standard
Departmental System for Managing Procurement Data and That Will Be
Linked and Interfaced into The M.I.S. During this Fiscal Year as Well.
Really the M.I.S. Is Becoming a Very Comprehensive Business Management
System and Moving Towards Fulfilling, I Think, Nina\'s Vision for this
as a Single Point of Information About the Major Business Processes of
the Bureau. We Hope to Keep Moving Forward In That Regard. A Couple of
Specific Points About a Couple of the Modules, Particularly, First of
All, Budget and Fund Status. I Want to Reemphasize That the Federal
Financial System, Ffs, Remains Our Official Accounting System in the
Bureau. The Way in Which Data Gets Entered on How Much Money Has Been
Spent, Who Spent it and Where It\'s Been Spent, Still Is Ffs, Though You
Go Through Remote Data Entry, You Go Through Rtars, You Still Submit
Your Information to the Denver Finance Center to Get Your Obligations
and Expenditures Entered into Ffs. That\'s Where the Actual Expense Data
Comes from for the M.I.S. The Actual Expense Data Comes as A Download
from Ffs into M.I.S. So We Don\'t Have a Dual Accounting System Here. We
Have a Single Source of Information. This Is the Real Accounting
Information of the Bureau. It\'s Not a Mirror System. The Differences
Are That It\'s Much More Timely. The Business That Gets Processed Into
Ffs Yesterday Is Available Today for You to See. So the Very Last
Entries You Made Yesterday into Ffs, When They Were Processed, They Will
Come up Today Showing Your Status. The Last Payroll That Was Run Is The
Labor Information That\'s in M.I.S. So You\'ve Got the Very Latest
Information That\'s Available. Hopefully this Will Help Us in a Lot of
Ways. One Way Is That Hopefully it Will Eliminate a Lot of the Need For
Records, with the Information Being Timely and Available and Easy to
Use, it Should Cut down a Lot of the Need for Maintaining Offline
Systems to Keep Track of Things. So We\'re Hoping That Folks Will Find
That Useful and Helpful. One of the Changes Is That Beginning with
Fiscal Year, Fy‑99, Cost Targeted Planning Will Be Done and Entered
Through The M.I.S. We Will Not Enter Cost Targets Via the Old Ffs
Screens Anymore, But We Will Be Entering Cost Targets Through the M.I.S.
and It\'s Important That this Be Done Accurately and Correctly Because A
Lot of the Utility of the Financial Piece of the M.I.S. Is Having a Good
Plan Against Which To Compare Your Actual Information. So Can You Track
Where You Are. We\'re Facilitating Through That Some Entry Screens in
the M.I.S. Several States Have Also Loaded Fy‑98 Cost Targets into the
M.I.S. and So They\'re Beginning To Have Some Historical Data. Other
States That Haven\'t Done That, I Think, Are Missing a Bet To Get ‑‑
Start Building a Pretty Good Record of Where They\'ve Been and Where
They\'re Going. That Leads Me To, Really, Some Discussion about Some of
the Uses of the M.I.S. Taking a Few Examples from the Budget and Fund
Status Part, First Thing That Makes the System Most Useful Is You Have a
Current Good ‑‑ Analysis of Your Current Situation. You Can Analyze It.
You Have the Information That\'s Current and up to Date, and You Can
Take That Information and Project it Forward, Look at it Against Where
Your Plans Are, See Where You Have Opportunities To Make Changes or
Handle That Unexpected Workload That You Have. It Also Gives You Good
Project Information If You\'re Tracking Things by Projects. You Can Go
in and Really Focus In on Project State Us and Where You Are Against
Your Project Plans, and this Year, with the Budget Staff We\'ll Be
Opening up More Project Numbers for the Field to Use and Helping Them by
Use of Those Numbers to Track Some Things That Are Important To You in
the Field And, Again, Make the System Much More Usable And Cut down on
the Offline Cuff Record Requirement Because the System Will Meet Your
Needs. With the Current Status, Also You Can Get Summary Reports and
Drill down into Details If You Need Them. We\'ll Show You That a Little
Later with Stan\'s Demonstration Here. Finally, I Think One of the Key
Features of the M.I.S., at Least The Fund Status Portion of It, Is That
You Can Access this Information from Any Point in The BLM, So That If
Somebody Needs to Get a Report on Some Particular Project or Item, in
Many Cases They Won\'t Have to Ask Some Staff or Some Other Office to
Prepare That Report, But You Can Go to the M.I.S. and Access the Data
and Do That Yourself Without Having to Put Another Workload Burden on
Someone Else. So We Think That Those Are Some Real Key Uses and Benefits
of The M.I.S. Another Use of the M.I.S. I\'d Want to Highlight Is That
We\'re Building a System That Allows People To Compare Data from Year to
Year. The Budget and Fund Status Portion Has Already All of Fy‑97
Financial Data, All of Fy‑98 Financial Data, Obviously as We Open the
Books for Fy‑99, That Data Will Be There, and We\'re Also Going Back and
Loading Some Data from Fy‑96. So We\'re Going to Start to Have
Year‑to‑year Comparison Ability And Trends in this Module and Stan Will
Show You a Feature of That a Little Later on in this Broadcast That Can
Be Helpful. But this Also Sets the Stage for Capabilities in Some of the
Other Modules. And So as We Begin to Bring this Data in and Capture it
and Store It from Year to Year, We\'ll Begin to Have the Capability of
Doing Good Trend Analysis and Things like Performance Results And
Customer Is Satisfaction and Other Data. So We See Some Real Benefits
Foot Bureau in Having That Information Available. In Terms of the
Performance Measures Module, I Would like to Indicate, You Know, as We
Go Into Fy‑1999, this Is a Critical Year for Us under the Government
Performance and Results Act, Because it Is the Year When the Tie Between
the BLM Strategic Plan, the BLM Budget and Our Performance Results and
Reporting Really Come Together And Live, If You Will. It\'s the Year
Which We Have to Make All of this Work Together And Do the Real ‑‑ the
For‑real Reporting. So Using M.I.S., for Example, at The National Level,
We Can Then Begin to Access the Information That\'s in the Various
Components, Financial, Performance, Results, et Cetera, And Build the
Kinds of Reports That Are Needed at the National Level Without Having to
Do Specific Data Calls to the Field And Impact the Field in Terms of
Getting That Information. So, Again, One of the Advantages Of the System
Is to Make the Process More Efficient and Relieve Some Burden, Some Work
Loads on Other Folks. We Can Link, Then, Our Actual Accomplishments to
Our Budget Levels and with Other Tools like Abc Begin to Have a Real
Good Fix on How We\'re Using Our Resources and What They\'re Really
Buying Us. With the Property and Vehicles Module, Which Is Already up
and Operating, Again, Here\'s the Information Available and Online To
the Field to Manage Their Fleet, Manage the Vast Array of Property and
Other Physical Assets That We Have in the Bureau, and this Help Us Do
Things like Reconciliation of Our Property Inventories with Our General
Ledger. It Helps Us in Maintaining Clean Audit Opinions and Other
Important Financial Quality in The BLM. Then, Finally, on the Managerial
Cost Data, the System, Module We\'re Plan to Go Bring on Late They Are
Fiscal Year, it Will Help Us Through the Abc Process To Look at the
Costs of Our Work Processes and How Effective They Are, What Results
They Produce And Where We Have Opportunities To Perhaps Use Our
Resources or Redirect Them to Get the Most Bang for the Buck in this
Static Budget Environment That Nina Mentioned. So We See Some Real
Benefits as We\'re Moving Forward with These Modules. They\'re Linking
Various Pieces Of Data Together. They Have Utility in Lots of Realms,
Such as Evaluation as Well as Budget Management and Control, and They
Also Provide Some Efficiencies in Helping Us To Address a Multitude of
Needs Without Having to Create Separate Stand‑alone or Non‑linked
System. So I Think That We\'re Right Here On the Edge of Some Real
Exciting Opportunities with the M.I.S., and I Think this Year, 1999,
Will Be an Exciting One For Us in Being Able to Deal With These Issues.
Thanks, Dave.

Brown: Thanks for That Good Survey, Roger. We\'re in the Process of
Implementing Activity‑based Costing Throughout the Bureau, And Could You
Say a Bit More About the Relationship Between Abc and M.I.S.?

Certainly. I Think One of the Key Relationships, Some People Have Been
Very Concerned about the Volume of Information That Abc Appears to
Require People to Develop, and Through the M.I.S. I Think We Can
Maximize the Exchange and Efficiency of That Information and Manage it
Well. We\'re Initially Going to Start Using Separate Pc Databases in
Each State to Collect Their Activity Information, Do Their Activity
Analysis and Collect The Cost. But a Lot of this Can Be Linked To the
Financial System. So by Putting it in the M.I.S., We Can Create a Lot
Closer Link And Bring into That Activity‑based Costing Analysis Actual
Expense Information, Actual Payroll Information, Actual Contract
Information, You Know, and Not Have People Have To Create That from
Separate Records or from Memory or Whatever. So I See this as Having a
Lot of Good Interaction in That We Can Link These Kinds of Cost Analyses
That Are Being Done With the Real Financial Data, And Then from That
Find Some Good Opportunities Where We Can Put Resources to Better Use,
Help Us Get Our Job Done, and So I See a Lot of Advantages in That Area.

Brown: Thanks, Roger. On the Line with Us from the Washington Office Is
Mark Davis. Mark Is an Analyst in the Budget Shop and One of the Users
of M.I.S., and We\'ve Asked Mark to Join Us and Share a Little Bit About
His Experience with M.I.S. Mark, Are You with Us?

Yes, I Am.

Brown: Good Morning. It\'s Good to Hear from the Other Side of the
Potomac River Today.

Thank You. Good to Be on Line.

Brown: Thanks for Joining Us. Would You Share a Little Bit About Your
Experience So Far With M.I.S., Mark?

Davis: Certainly. I Have Found the M.I.S. System To Be a Very Powerful
Tool for Me in the Budget Shop at the Washington Office. Not Only Can We
Look at National Level Numbers, but We Can Also Drill down into
Office‑specific Numbers, Office‑specific Obligations and Even, in Fact,
Drill down to the Specific Obligation That Took Place So That We Can
Track Something If We\'re Trying to Find Whether or Not a Certain
Obligation Has, in Fact, Cleared the System. The Question That I Have
for the Panel Is, Can I Assume That the Next Phase of the M.I.S. System
That Incorporates the Performance and Workload Data Will Be as User
Friendly and Easy to Operate as the Budget And Finance Information?

Brown: Well ‑‑

Hatfield: Yes.

Brown: She Went Right for That Answer, Mark.

Davis: Will the Format Be The Same?

Hatfield: I Think What We\'re Planning on Doing Is Drawing the
Performance Information from the Home System Just like We Have Drawn the
Financial Information From the Ffs System. I Guess ‑‑ I Am Going to Let
Roger Take a Shot at This, but From My Own View, It\'s Going to Take Us
a Little Bit of Time Because I Think the Legacy Systems We Are Dealing
with Will Need Some Modification to Make It Quite as Easy, but I Think
Over the Long‑term It\'s Going to Be Just as Exactly the Same as In
Terms of Getting into it and Using the Information, Making The Reports.

Good. Thank You.

Hildebeidel: Mark, You Know, I\'d like to Point out a Little Bit ‑‑

Hatfield: Here Comes the Cautionary Note!

Hildebeidel: No, Not at All. As a Matter of Fact, I Think Nina Was a
Little Too Cautious. But We Are Using the Same Tools, The Same Approach
in the Performance Measures as We\'ve Used in the Budget and Fund
Status. The Brio Tool, the Kind of Capability to Go in and Query And
Arrange Reports and Stuff Is There in That Module as Well, And We\'re
Bringing Data into That from Other Sources, but Using the Same Concepts,
it Will Be There as a Data Warehouse and Being Able to Go in Through the
Brio Tool, Get It, Array It, Rack it up Any Way You like and Report it
out. So the Whole Concept in the M.I.S. Is That That Same Look And Feel
of the Budget and Fund Status Module Will Carry Through The Rest as
Well. That\'s Our Goal.

Davis: Good.

Hatfield: I Would See it Sort Of as Levels, and the Top Level In Terms
of How You Use the Brio Tool Is Going to Be the Same No Matter What it
Is. I Do Think We Will Have to Go in And Do Some Adjustments on the
Legacy Systems to Make Them Work For Us as Well as We Would like And as
Efficiently.

Hildebeidel: Absolutely.

Brown: Did That Answer Your Question?

Davis: That Did. Thank You Very Much.

Brown: Thank You for Sharing With Us. Appreciate That Very Much. Have a
Great Day.

You Too. Bye‑bye.

Brown: at this Point We\'re Going to Ask Stan Curtis to Test Drive this
M.I.S. for Us a Bit To See What it Is That We Have And Just What the
System Can Do For Us. Stan?

Curtis: Thank You, Dave. I Guess When Dave Said to Test Drive the
System, When We Were Training in April to ‑‑ Some of The Budget Officers
and Budget Analysts in the Bureau, One of The Budget Officers Came up to
Me and Says, \"You Know, this Is Like Going from Volkswagen to a
Cadillac.\" So I Have to Be Careful Here. I Wanted to Point out a Number
Of Items That There Is Information out There on the BLM Intranet That
Deals with M.I.S., Deals with the New Modules Coming on Line. One of
Those Areas Happens to Be At the Washington Office, and The Address on
the Internet Is Web.wo.BLM.gov. And Having this out There, You Can See
That There\'s Links to The New Billings and Collection Systems, the New
Performance Measures, There\'s Information About M.I.S., Customer Survey
Stuff Is out There That Can Give You Some Information on These
Prototypes That Are Coming on Line Here in Fy‑99. If I Was to Click on
M.I.S. as An Example, I\'m Actually Going To Go to the Washington Office
And Get Some Information on a Little More Comprehensive Where I Can Look
a Little More about What\'s Going on in the Licensing And What Problems
We Have Been Having, and it Provides Information to the End Users. The
Other Area I Would like to Go to Is There Is Actually an M.I.S. Home
Page for the Management Information System And the Address to That Is
mis.blm.gov. That\'s Where Most People Will End up to Start Their Access
of The Budget and Fund Status or The Property and Vehicles Scenario.
There\'s Some Key Areas I Want to Point out on this Screen. One of the
Key Areas Is We Do Have an Active Help Desk at the National Business
Center, and on The Bottom of the Internet Page, The Help Desk, There Is
a Phone Number. That Phone Number Is 303‑236‑4176. If You Have Any Other
Questions While You\'re in There or You Seem to Have Difficulties, You
Can Also E‑mail Them at 640 Help@sc.BLM.governor. This Is the Place
Where Most Users Coming and Wanting to Use The Brio Insight to Look at
Their Data Can Get the Tool. For Pc Users, They Would Select The Direct
Database Access and They Would Log in as Fmis with a Password of FMIS,
and There Would Be a Preset of Questions Would That Ask You to Walk You
Through to Download the Plug‑in To Help You Look at the Data. For the Ax
Users, the Bureau System Administrators in Your Particular Offices Need
to Contact the Help Desk and They Will Provide Them with Instructions of
How to Get the Helper Application for the Ax Site Installed in Your
Location. We Also Have Kind of a Brio System Status Information Link
That Tells What\'s Going On, What He Is What\'s Been Loaded, What
Hasn\'t Been Loaded and as You Can See the Ffs Data ‑‑ Another
Tongue‑twister Here ‑‑ for September 28 Has Not Been Loaded Yet. We
Expect to Finish this Afternoon. Kind of Gives You a Status What\'s
Going on from Last Night\'s Data F I Would Select on A State like
Arizona, I Would Bring up a Typical Module That Roger Talked about That
Was Initially Designed for This, Customer Survey Budget and Fund Status,
Which Roger Indicated Being Live, Billings and Collections, Managerial
Cost Data, Performance Measures, Property and Space. We Do Have Some
Live Links for The Property and Space Data, and You Can See it Will
Bring up Another Menu Choice Giving You Options to Look at the Various
Data and Most of These Are Probably Familiar with the Property People.
In this Particular Case, the Report File Is ‑‑ Choices Would Be the Old
Candid Reports You Typically Got in the Mail Versus The Brio File So
Those Coming on Can See the Difference Between The Old Report File and
the New Style of Brio. Go Back a Little Bit. As I Said, These Other
Modules, As They Come On, If I Was to Click on Customer Research, it
Hasn\'t Gone into Production Yet. You Would Get an \"Under
Construction\" Scenario. Wanted to Talk a Little about The Budget and
Fund Status. If I Clicked on That, What\'s Going to Bring up Is the
Choices That We Have Broken down Based On End Users\' Requirements Based
On Categories, like Cost Targets, Fire Projects, Working Capital Fund. I
Could Look at Detailed Transactions in this Particular Case. Actually
I\'m Going to Select the State Subactivity Planning Scenario and it
Brings Me up a Menu Choice That Typically Is Standard for Everybody. I
Can Go out and Process and Get A Set of Results or Use the Data That\'s
Already There. I Can Look at an Activity Summary. These Are the Candid
Reports That We Typically Were Used To. You Basically Print Them. You
Don\'t Do a Lot of Analysis With These Type of Reports. They Are Kind of
Nice and Fancy To Have on Your Desk. I Have Various Levels of Those. You
Can Also Look at the Activate the Dollar, Which Allows Me to Drill into
Data. I Wanted to Take One Area and Let\'s Say I Wanted to Focus on a
Particular Reporting Office. I Could Show All the Items in This Report,
Which Would Give Me All My Field Offices, Say, in Arizona, California,
Alaska, but This Particular Office Is One of Our Field Offices I Could
Actually Focus On. I Could Then Take and Drill into Any One of These
Categories Here Of, Say, Subactivity. So Now I Could See by That
Reporting Office, by the Subactivity in the Bureau, by The Minor
Categories, Labor, Contracts, Travel, Vehicle Cost Of What I\'m Looking
At. Maybe I Want to See What I\'m Doing in Just the Subactivity 1010. I
Could Then Focus on this Particular Item. That Would Tell Me on Those
Minor Categories What I\'m Actually Focusing On. I Could Then Take and
Select This and Maybe Increase My Font Size to Anything Bigger by a
Number of Clicks. I Can Widen My Columns. So Maybe It\'s More Readable
for People in a Particular Office. Maybe this Is What I Have ‑‑ I Have
to Go to a Meeting on a Monday Morning, and I Have to Meet with My
Supervisor and Give Him a Status of How I\'m Spending My must Not Knee
1010. I Could Simply Take this Chart Right Now, I Could Do a Right Click
with My Mouse, and I Have Various Menu Options. I Can Come down and
Select Insert, and I Can Chart this Pivot. Now, If That\'s Not the Chart
That I Like, I Can Turn Around And Create a Different Type of Chart. To
Where it Meets My Needs. The Other Thing That Roger Talked about Was
That We Can Do Analysis. Well, When We Were Looking at This Earlier this
Year, We Took The End of Year Cost Targets From Last Year and the Pawp
Cost Targets this Year from a Couple Brio Documents and Did a Comparison
Against Those and the Idea Is What Is in the Activity 1000 Ak, Alaska,
or Bureauwide Doing. Are They up or down Based on the Previous Year?
That Gives You That Analysis, Roger, from Year to Year. We Also Have
What We Call the Outliner. What it Actually Does Is Allows To Select
Things with a Drag and Drop Rather than Drilling In. Maybe I Don\'t Want
My State in a Linear Fashion, I Want it Horizontally. I Can Take and
Drag it up to There. Or Maybe I Want to Bring in the ‑‑ Remove the
Activity Name. I Can Select and That Just Remove It. Or Maybe If That\'s
Not What I Really Wanted, I Wanted to Bring It Back Of, I Could Go up to
the Request Line and Drag it down. So I Have Two Options of Drilling in
or Drilling down or Using My Outliner. I Also What They Call, and the
Reason Why I\'m in a Pivot, Is I Have the Ability to Pivot My Data N
this Case My States Are Across the Top. That May Be in One Area Very
Good to Do. Another Way Means I May Want to Drag this over and Put it
More In a Linear Fashion. Now I Have by State and So Forth. Thank You,
Dave.

Hatfield: Dave, You Can See Why I Was So Excited Boot Use of The BLMers
as They Looked at the Prototype, Because I Personally Have Used Some
Charting Tools And I Have Never Used One That I Thought Was as Easy to
Use as This Brio Is. You Can See Why I\'m So Excited By It. Every Time I
Use and it See It, I Think It\'s a Great Tool.

Hildebeidel: Maybe We Can Ask Stan to See If on One of These Pivots,
like the One on the Object Class Data, Co‑drill in a Little Bit and Show
How You Can Get to Some of the More Detailed Information If You\'re
Interested In It. Like If You Wanted to Get Overtime or Something like
That.

Curtis: We\'re Going to Actually Go on out and Connect And I\'m Going to
Bring in a File. It\'s 1000‑k, to Give You an Idea Of What\'s Going on
out There. We\'re Going to the Denver Center And Pulling the File Across
the Network. So I\'m Talking While It\'s Coming Up. You Need to See
That. I Am Probably Going to Bring in Somewhere Between 5,000 and 6,000
Lines of Data in a Couple Minutes. In the Typical, If You Had Lotus Or
Applix as a Spreadsheet and Tried to Bring in That Amount of Data on
Your Pc or Aix Box, You Would Be Looking at Three, Four, Five, Six
Minutes to Bring That Data In. It Is Now Opening up the Brio Insight
Document and it May Be a Little Hard for to You See, but It\'s Loading
and Saving Results On the Bottom. It Kind of Gives You a Status of
What\'s Going on with the File Itself and Applying the Local Limits. In
this Particular Case, 5,000 Or 6,000 Rows of Data. This File Actually
Has Almost 11,000 Rows of Data Coming Across the Network. The Old Lotus
1‑2‑3 Version 5 Could Only Bring in about 8,000 Lines of Data.

Hatfield: Isn\'t it Quicker Because it Does Just Bring in The Data You
Want to Use? It Doesn\'t Have to Download the Entire File?

Curtis: That\'s Correct.

Hatfield: I\'m Translating it For Another End User Here, Myself.

Curtis: So When I Brought That Up, I Will Going to Go to The Dollar
Pivot. It\'s Initially Going to Do Some Calculations. We Saved That. So
We Only Do it on the Screens We\'re Doing. And Roger Had Some Questions
About, Well, I Have Labor and Operational Dollars in a Format. I Can
Actually Select That Column. I Can Do a Right Click and Drill Into the
Budget Object Code. Now, That\'s Actually the Number, And It\'s Going to
Go Back out And Calculate and Tells Me All The Bocs by That Particular
Name. Maybe I Want to Look at this Boc And I Don\'t Know What That Bocs
I Don\'t Know the Name of It. A Budget Person Might, but a Manager Might
Not. I Can Actually Do a Right Click And Just Focus on That Particular
Boc in My Data Set. From There, I Can Then Select That Column, I Can Do
a Right Click, I Can Drill into Actually The Boc Name. You Can See ‑‑
It\'s Overtime. That Was a Good Guess. And You See the Columns. Now I
Know What Overtime ‑‑ as a Budget Person, I like Numbers, I Like to Deal
with the 115‑as and The 1400s and 1300s but as a Manager You May Not
Know Land Resources. So They Could Focus on That Particular Item,
Calculate the Things, and See the Overtime in Land Resources.

Hildebeidel: and this Was Live. Did You this over the Network.

Curtis: Actually Did this Live, Going to Denver and Coming Back.

Hildebeidel: That Was Pretty Quick.

Curtis: That\'s about 10,800 Rows of Data.

Hatfield: How\'s That for a Test Drive?

Hildebeidel: There\'s the Cadillac.

Brown: Thanks, Stan, for Showing Us What M.I.S. Looks Like and What a
Powerful Tool it Is. Before We Continue Our Discussion, We\'ve Invited
Rulon Duncan from the Utah State Office to Call in and Share His
Experience. Rulon Is the State Budget Officer for Utah. Rulon, Are You
with Us?

Duncan: I Am.

Brown: Can You Share a Bit About Your Test Drive Much M.I.S.?

Duncan: Sure. I Would like to Take a Few Minutes We Have Experienced
near Utah. I Have Been Involved in BLM Budgeting for Almost Two Decades.
I Think M.I.S. Is the Most Exciting Financial Management Analytical Tool
That We\'ve Had During My Tenure. Certainly it Surpasses the Huge
Accounting Sheets That We Used To Use or the Slow Calculator. Most
BLMers Probably Don\'t Remember That, Those Type of Experiences. Last
April We Attended the Orientation on Brio and M.I.S. At the Training
Center. Following That Brief Exposure, We Returned to Salt Lake City to
Test and Familiarize Selves with The ‑‑ Some of the Base its. A Couple
Weeks Later, We Traveled the State to Share Some Of Our Newly Acquired
but Limited Knowledge of M.I.S. with Our Field Offices. During the Few
Hours That We Spent at Each Site That We Tried To Have Managers and
Others Involved in Budgetary Work, Have Hands‑on Experience Using M.I.S.
We Were Really Impressed with How Quickly Our Participants Grasped the
M.I.S. Fundamentals And Became Operative. Some Managers Have Continued
to Use M.I.S., Including Our Associate State Director. She Has Been Able
to Check Our Budget Status Periodically and Any Problems She Notes, She
Can Surface to Me or Appropriate Managers or Staff. By Late June, Our
Users Had Sufficient Confidence in the Data and Their Skills to
Exclusively Adopt M.I.S. In July We Stopped Downloading The Monthly
Program Management Reports. We Discontinued Our Usage of the
Computerized Financial Management System That Was Developed by Arizona.
Microfiche Copies of the Financial Management Copies Have Been Unopened
since the June Distribution. One of the Great M.I.S. Benefits Has Been
the Ease in Training Users and Resolving Some of Our Budget Problems.
Even When We\'re Separated by Hundreds of Mile. We Can Look at the Same
Data Simultaneously. We Can Talk about the Problems With Our Users at
the Same Time They Are Viewing the Data on Their Pcs. We Can Discuss the
Options for Finding the Needed Information, Scroll Through the Screens
Together, and Simultaneously Even Have the Same Keystrokes or Mouse
Button Clicks. A Quick Examples Is the Current Detailed Transaction
Information Feature Was Not Operative When We Toured Our State. Stan
Curtis Later Introduced Me To That Particular Feature During a Telephone
Call. In Turn, I Was Able to Work Individually with the M.I.S. Users
Throughout Utah. All We Needed Were Our Telephone And Access to M.I.S.
Together We Explored and Learned The Detailed Transaction Information
Capabilities Much M.I.S. I Think M.I.S. Has Been Really a Good Tool for
Improving Our Budget Teamwork in this State. In Utah We\'ve Found That
M.I.S. Is Also a Powerful Cure for What I like to Call, \"If We Could
Only\" Syndrome and What Is ‑‑ What Is the \"If We Could Only\"
Syndrome? Perhaps It\'s Best Described by Some of the Symptoms. If We
Could Only Understand Why Work‑months and Other Costs Fluctuate Wildly
from Month to Month. If We Could Only Isolate Transactions, Focus on
Items and Dissect Expenditures When We Note Problems or Potential
Deviations. If We Could Only Manipulate Data Without Moving it to
Another Medium. If We Could Only Have Updates More Often. Previously the
Remedies for the \"If We Could Only\" Syndrome Have Been Long Periods
Scrolling Through Microfiche Pages, Transferring Data to Spreadsheets or
Waiting until The next Month Reports with the Hope That Someway There
Would Be A Magical Healing. Now All We Need to Do Is to Access the
Internet and M.I.S. My Endorsement for M.I.S. May Have Sounded like a
Late‑night Infomercial, but I Really Am a Believer, and M.I.S. Certainly
Outshines Those Accounting Pads And the Calculator.

Brown: Check Is in the Mail, Rulon.

Hatfield: Now You Can See Why I Didn\'t Have My Credit Card, Right?

Brown: That\'s Right. I Appreciate Your Sharing Your Experience and That
of Your Colleagues out in Utah Very Much. That\'s Helpful and Extremely
Encouraging to All of Us. This Concludes Our Formal Presentation on
M.I.S. We\'ve Reserved the Rest Every Today\'s Program to Answer Your
Questions, and One Question That I Would like to Put out There Is I
Would like to Ask, Is M.I.S. The Right Tool at the Right Time? We\'re
Interested in Hearing from All of Our Viewers Who Have Experienced the
M.I.S. If You\'re out There and Have Thoughts on this Particular
Question or Any of the Other Points We\'ve Discussed Today, Please Feel
Free to Give Us a Call or to Send Us a Fax. We\'d like to Hear from You.
We\'ll Stay on the Air to Answer As Many of Your Questions as We Can in
the Time Remaining. We Already Have Several Faxes That Have Come In, and
I\'d like To Get at Those and I\'ll Pose The First One to Nina. This Is
from Roseburg, Oregon, Roseburg District. Do You Anticipate the Bureau
Being Charged to Come in Within 1% on Expenditures Again in Fy‑99?

Hatfield: Well, I Believe That That Probably Will Be the Case. The 1% Is
Our Effort to Try to Meet the Concerns That the Department Had and That
Omb Had When We Had a Large Amount of Carryover over the Last Two Years.
Frankly, I Don\'t Think It\'s Going to Be Much of an Issue for Us next
Year Because Weaver\' Used So Much of Our Carryover This Year, I Think
next Year We\'re Really Going to Be Struggling as We Look at Trying To
Cover Some of Our Uncontrollable Costs It. We Probably Won\'t Get
Appropriated Dollars for That This Year. I Think We Will All Be
Struggling Trying to Live Within Our Appropriated Dollars this Next
Year. But I Would Be Surprised If Omb Or the Department Are Going to Be
Interested in Us Maintaining A Very High Carryover Balance.

Brown: Several Other Questions We Also Have from Oregon, and I\'ll Tee
this up for Roger. Will M.I.S. Be Able to Separate Overtime from Regular
Time Expenditures? As an End User Tracking Work‑month Use That
Information Would Be Most Helpful to Me.

Hildebeidel: I Think as We Demonstrated a Few Minutes Ago, In Terms of
the Capability of M.I.S., You Can Drill down into A Pretty Fine Level of
Detail of Information That\'s in the Financial Systems. Since Overtime
Is Captured in Ffs, It\'s One of the Things That You Can Certainly Drill
down Into and Get a Good Handle on What You\'re Spending on Overtime,
and Then You Can Chart It, Graph It, Handle That Information in Any Way
That You Need to Analyze It. So, Yes, It\'s There with a Lot Of Other
Information.

Brown: While You Have the Floor, a Question, Will District Offices Have
Accessibility to Be Able to Input Plan Dollars for Work‑month and
Operational Costs? This Ability Would Allow Us to Have Data in the
System That Would Make the Use of it Much More Meaningful.

Hildebeidel: Short Answer Is, Yes. Starting with Fy‑99. One of the
Things We\'re Asking For in the Fiscal 99 Pawp Is That the Cost Targets
Be Planned At Both the Level of the Subactivity, Because That\'s Where
We Need to Track Things, And at the Level of the Office That\'s Going to
Incur the Obligation. So it Would Be down to the District or Field
Office Level To Plan Their Dollars and Put Them into the M.I.S. I\'m
Going to Ask Stan to Help Me On This, That the Input Screen Is Being
Developed and That the Districts Will Be Able to Input Through the
M.I.S. Screen Their Plan Cost Targets?

Curtis:, Yes, Roger, There Is A Screen out There Actually Right Now That
You Could Go See For \'98, but We\'re Revising That To Make it a Little
More User Friendly, and it Should Be Available by the End of October For
\'99. Whoever They Authorize to Get The Password, Because it Is Password
Protected, Should Be Able to Enter Their Data.

Hildebeidel: Great.

Brown: on the Line with Us From the California State Office In
Sacramento Is Andy Smith. Andy, Are You with Us?

Caller: Yes, I\'m with You. Good Morning.

Brown: It\'s Real Good to Have You. What\'s Your Question or Comment For
Us?

Caller: First of All, I Have A Comment and Then I\'ll Ask a Question. I
Want to Second What Rulon Said From Utah. We\'re Excited with M.I.S. in
California, Particularly in the Area of Projects. As You Know, We Manage
Hundreds Of Projects Here in California, Reimbursables and
Contributions, Right‑of‑ways, and We\'re Always Want to Go Know Where We
Are So We Keep from Overspending and I See this as a Great Tool. We\'re
Using it this Year. My Question Had to Do the Performance Measure Ones.
Again, this Is a Module or ‑‑ We\'re Very Interested in and Want to Know
Will this Module Eventually Involve the Entry of Data at the Field
Office Level? If So, When? And Then I Guess it Would Be Our Assumption,
Too, Once We Enter This Data, Is this Going to Do Away with the
Reporting Stuff That We Have to Do at the Pawp Time since Washington
Would Be Able to Automatically Download And Query That Information?

Brown: Good Question. Roger, Do You Want to Take a Shot at That?

Hildebeidel: Sure Will. Thanks for Asking That, Andy. I Think the Answer
to Both of Your Questions Is Yes and Yes. We Are Using the Same Input
Type Tool That We\'re Developing for Inputting the Cost Target Data Into
the Financial Side for Inputting the Performance Information Workload
Information In the Performance System. Now, We Are in the \'99 Pawp
Asking for the Feedback on That Information, and We May Do A, You Know,
Mass Upload of That at The Very Beginning, but Certainly the Game Plan
Is, this Fiscal Year That the Responsibility for Entering and
Maintaining That Information Will Be at the State and Field Office
Level, and it Will Be Through the Input Screens of the M.I.S. Like I
Said, I Think We Hope ‑‑ The Feature Has Been Designed And Ready to Go.
We\'re Just Kind of Waiting for Data and Have That up and Running in the
next Month or So. So the Answer to That Question Is Certainly Yes. The
Answer to the Question, Will This Eliminate Reports? We Certainly Hope
So. We Think this Is the Capability Of Doing That. Like You Said, like
Rulon Said, You Can Sit at the One Office And Collect That Information
Without Having to Go out on Data Call, Look at the Information And Bring
it Back and Work with It. So We Won\'t Have to Ask the States or
Districts to Do Special Reports as Long as They\'re Keeping up Their End
of The Database, it Should Meet Our Reporting Needs. So I Think That\'s
the Goal.

Caller: Good. Thank You. We\'re Looking Forward to New and Greater
Things with M.I.S., Then.

Hildebeidel: Thanks, Andy.

Brown: Thanks for Calling, Andy. Appreciate Your Comments and Your
Encouraging Approach out There in the State of California. From the
State of Arizona, We Have a Fax Directed at Nina. M.I.S. Seems to Be
Working Towards a Comprehensive, Quote, Information Resources
Management, Unquote, System. Does the Adoption of this Approach Change
the Role of Irm In the Bureau? If So, How Would it Change?

Hatfield: Well, I Certainly Hope That it Does in the Sense That it Will
Make the Work That The Irm Folks Are Doing a Lot Easier. Certainly
Delivery of the M.I.S. Over the Internet Means That the Individual Field
Level Irm Person Is Not Going to Have to Spend the Time Downloading and
Maintaining a Particular Copy of The Software. So That\'s Going to Be an
Advantage in Terms of the Long‑term Operation and Maintenance. It Also
Means That, I Think Our Irm People Are Going to Be Not So Concerned
Bureauwide in Terms Of Big Software Development Problems, and So That
the Focus, Again, for Irm People in the Future, I Think, Is Really Going
To Be Helping the End User Maximize the Capability of the System That We
Have in Place. We Really Have to Teach People How They Can Use the Tools
So That We Can Get All the Advantages out of Tools. Like We\'ve Said
Before, Our Real Goal Here Is to Move Away from Argument about the Data,
What The Data Is, into Trying to Talk To Each Other about What the Data
Means to Us and What Kind Of Action Is Indicated from the Data That We
Have. But I Do Think That it Does Mean A Change or Shift in Focus for
The Irm People but a Role That I Think Is Going to Be Much, Much More
Valuable to the Organization as a Whole as They Help Us in Terms of End
User Support.

Brown: We Have a Series of Questions from the Phoenix Field Office and
I\'ll Direct These to Stan, and I\'ll Just Set up a Series Here for You,
Stan. Is There a Limitation on the Number of Users Access the Database
at the Same Time? Two, What Is the Anticipated Network Traffic with this
Capability? And, Three, Can You Explain Local Training Requirements?

Curtis: to the First Question On the Access of Limitations of How Many
Users Could Access the System at One Time to the Data Tables, it Goes
Through a Priority. You May Wait a Little Bit, but There Are No
Limitations. It\'s on a Priority Basis. So Depending upon People
Connecting to It. The Second Question about the Network, Dave, I Think
That Depends ‑‑ We\'re All on the Network. We Might All Be Sending
E‑mail Traffic. I Think We See Times During the Midday Where It\'s
Slower Whether You\'re on Groupwise or Something Else. That\'s Just the
Network Capabilities of the System. The Third Question Was the Training.
If There\'s Some Training Needs That We Need to Do out There, My
Suggestion Would Be to Contact National Business Center and Do Some
Coordination with the Help Desk to Schedule Some Training, Whether It\'s
Technical or Whether It\'s End User Training.

Brown: Another Question. This One from Washington. We\'ll Send this to
Nina. How Will We Know M.I.S. Is Being Successful?

Hatfield: Well, I Think There Are a Couple of Indicators for All of Us
about M.I.S. Being Successful. One of Those, I Think, I\'ve Had A Good
Feeling about Just in Listening to Folks Talk about it Today. But Most
Importantly Is Customer Usage. If the M.I.S. System Is Successful, it
Will Be Successful Because That People Find it Easy to Use and
Applicable to What They\'re Doing Day‑to‑day in the Bureau. That\'s the
Number One Criteria, In My Mind. I Think That We\'re a Long Way Down the
Road There and I Have To Really Give Great Thanks to Stan Curtis and to
Dave Burlly And Other Members of the User Team Because I Think What They
Did Was Put the System Together Based on a Lot of Knowledge That They
Had about BLM\'s Programs And the Needs of BLM Users, and I Think
That\'s What\'s Gotten Us Down the Road to What I Think Is Going to Be a
Very Successful System and Very Useful One. But Customer Usage in My
Mind Is The Number One Thing. I Think as You Look at Other Things That
Are Important to Us In Terms of Success of M.I.S., It\'s the Kind of
Thing That Roger Is Talking about in Terms Of Making Sure That We Can
Draw Data from Other Systems and Put Them into a Reporting System So
That the Cardinal Rule Ought to Be That You Only Have to Enter Data
Once, but We Can Use it Multiple Times for Multiple Things. So There\'s
Another Indicator of Success That I\'ll Be Looking At. Then Thirdly, I
Think Just Has To Be a Concern for Us Across The Bureau, it Doesn\'t
Matter What the System Is, as We\'re Looking Toward More Efficient Uses
of Our Dollars, We Have to Look down the Load at Any Kind Of System
We\'re Going to Deploy And We Have to Be Able to Feel Comfortable That
It\'s a System That We Can Afford to Operate And Maintain Long Term and
I Think That the ‑‑ over the Web, Off‑the‑shelf Software Kind of
Approach We Have with the M.I.S. Is Going to Help Us in That, That as We
Look at It, Long‑term It\'s Going to Be Something We Can Maintain. So
Those Are Going to Be the Critical Things I Think I\'ll Be Looking At.

Brown: Thanks. From Moab, Utah, I Have a Question ‑‑ Will There Be a
User Manual with How‑tos Going out to The Field Offices? Roger?

Hildebeidel: There Has Been a Draft Manual on How to Use the Brio
Software. I\'m Not Sure How Widely It\'s Been Distributed Yet, but That
Was Developed by the Denver Business Center as a Handbook. There Is a ‑‑
Some Online Help That\'s Already Available Through The Bfr Home Page
That Stan Gave The Address To, and Some of the Features of the System,
Some of The Definitions of the Different Columns and Things That Are
Available There as an Online Help Thing. Stan, Are You Aware of Other
Efforts Going on in That Regard?

Curtis: I Think the Training Center, as Roger Indicated, Is ‑‑ Has
Developed a Draft Manual, And I Think If You Called the Help Desk Again
and Were Looking For a Copy of That, They Would Be More than Happy to
Provide it For You.

Brown: from the State of Arizona, a Question to Be Directed to Roger
Again, Once Again You\'re a Very Popular Fellow with These Kinds of
Systems, must Be Your Military Training, San Juan Hill ‑‑

Hildebeidel: Yeah, it Was a Tough Ride up That Hill.

Brown: Yeah, I Bet. I Pity the Horse. Will States ‑‑ Will States and
Centers Be Given a Block of Project Numbers to Be Used for Their Own
Internal Needs? \[ Not Bureau Projects \]

Hildebeidel: the Idea Is, in This Fiscal Year, That We Are Going to Give
Through the Budget Shop a Block of Project Numbers To States to Use for
Tracking Things That Are Important to Them at That Level Rather than
Things That Are National Projects. Hopefully by Providing this Kind Of
Tool We\'ll Have a Balance, Not Have an Overabundance of Data in the
System, but by the Same Token, Have a Tool That State Centers Can Use So
That They Don\'t Have to Have Cuff Records and Are Putting Data in
Through the System, and That Will Be Something That\'s Going To Be Done
in Coordination with The \'99 Pawp.

Brown: from Montana, a Long Comment, and a Question ‑‑ I Looked at Ffs
and M.I.S. for Contributed Fund Balance and the Amounts Were Different.
Ffs Showed a Credit and M.I.S. Showed a Deficit. There Had Not Been
Activity in That Account for about a Month, So the Information Should
Have Been up to Date on Both Systems. What Would Cause the Differing
Balances Between the Two Systems? Certainly We Preferred Using the
Balance in Ffs Where it Showed a Credit. Stan, Do You Want ‑‑

Curtis: I Can Probably Answer That. There Is in Your Trust Accounts,
Reimbursable Accounts, Those That Have Carry‑forward Balances From
Fy‑98. We\'re Trying to Obtain That Data For That Available Balance. The
Last Indication I Got Was by The End of this Week That File Should Be
Available for Us to Load, Which Would Then Conclude Having Those Total
Dollars, and It Should Match up with Ffs. With a Lot of Things Going On,
It Was One of Those Files That Kind of Got Missed. So Hopefully Starting
in Fy‑99, That Data Source Is There and I Think That\'s the Only Data
Source We\'re Missing Today in M.I.S.

Hatfield: So this User Found It?

Curtis: Well, We\'ve Known About it for a Number of Months.

Hatfield: but the Important Thing Is That the Ffs Is the ‑‑

Curtis: Official Accounting System.

Hatfield: If You Don\'t Have It in Ffs ‑‑ That\'s Where it Needs to Be.
Somebody from Oregon We Have This Question ‑‑ Can the Labor Detail
Information Be Changed to Include the Overtime Hours? Certainly ‑‑
Currently Only All Hours Show Without the Overtime Hours Separated out.
It Would Be Helpful to See the Actual Hours by Person, Similar To What
the Old Aspn System Provided. Stan?

Curtis:, Yes, If That\'s a User Requirement, the System Is Flexible
Enough to Change. We\'ve Heard about That Comment, Maybe Doing it like
the Old Manpower Correlation Reports Used to Be. We Are Trying to Change
a Little Bit How We\'re Looking at Data. In the Detail, Can You Bring it
Down by Budget Object Code, Which You Could Distinguish What Is
Overtime. Could You Distinguish What Is Regular Time. Or We May Need To,
Because of User Requirements, We Don\'t Want A Lot of People Throughout
Having to Be Techies, but We Could Design Something That Had That Same
Representation. It\'s a Matter of Identifying Those User Needs to Us,
and I Think We Can Accommodate That. Dave?

Brown: While You Have the Floor, Stan, Let\'s Ask Another Question
Provided Us Here. How Much Historic Ffs Data Will Be Input? How Far Back
Are We Going to Go With That?

Curtis: Roger Indicated That We Presently Have Loaded Fy‑97 Data, Fy‑98
Data and Then Starting, You Know, next Month We Will Be Loading \'99
Data. We Do Have Backed off of the Federal Financial System All of Fy‑96
Data. We Basically Drop a Journal File That Encompasses a Lot of
Information, Not Just Budget and Fund Status. So We Have to Go Through
and Isolate What Is Part of the Fund Status Versus What\'s Fixed Assets
and So Forth. There Has Been Some Discussion To Take from Another
System, Which Is Prms, Which Is What Generates the Pg Reports, and They
Have Take ‑‑ Data, Summary Data, Back to 1990, and Offload It off the
Honeywell and Have it Out There. Whether We Make it Available to The
Daily User or Not Is Questionable. But at Least We\'re Looking at \'96
Through Current Year.

Brown: Ok. A Question from Oregon. In the past We Have Noticed Vehicle
Expenditures as Being Very Erratic, That Is, Dropping And Rising like
the Stock Market From Month to Month. What Causes this Fluctuation From
Month to Month and Will M.I.S. Correct this? Stan?

Curtis: I Don\'t Know That it Drastically Changes from Month To Month.
It Depends on the Day That You Look at It. I Think ‑‑

Hatfield: It\'s Day‑to‑day.

Curtis: under the Old System, We\'re Changing How We Look at Data Today.
Under the Old System it Was, We Got a Report Once a Month and We Had a
Month to Dissect It, and The Data Didn\'t Change. With the Management
Information System, the Day You a Changes Every Day. So Let\'s Say That
Typically Posting of Labor ‑‑ or of Vehicle Costs Is Around the 20th Of
the Month. Might Be the 21st, 22nd. The Day Before That Posting, They
Reverse out Any Accruals of Vehicle Costs. So If You Look at it That One
Day, it Drops Considerably. You Go in the next Day, 24 Hour Later, and
They Post a New Accrual and Actuals, and it Jumps Back Up. So Looking at
Your Data on a Particular Day Can Have a Big Effect and Knowing When
Those Things Get Posted Gives You an Idea of ‑‑ Well, Maybe Today I
Don\'t Want to Look at the Data Because I Have Everything Taken Out and
I Have to Wait One Day To Look at Vehicle Costs. We Are in the Process
on the Front Page of the Management Information System to Provide a Time
Schedule of What Is Being Posted for That Current Month. So it Gives You
Kind of a Schedule of Maybe When to Look At Your Data.

Brown: Thanks, Stan. From Arizona, a Question ‑‑ When, or Is There More
Training For Other Modules Such as Performance Data System and Property?
Roger?

Hildebeidel: Certainly the Plan Is to Provide Training When We Start to
Bring Those Systems up and Use Them. But, like I Said, a Lot of it Is
Going to Use the Same Basic Software N Large Degree, If You Know How to
Use the Brio Tool, The Brio Insight Tool to Manipulate Your Data, Do
Pivots And So Forth, in the Fund Status And Financial Piece You Will Be
Able to Do the Same Thing in the Other Modules. The Main Difference
Would Be Understanding the Data. One of the Key Things Is You Have to
Know What Is Being Recorded and When and What That Means. So
Understanding the Data, I Think, Is Going to Be a Much More Critical
Need. But to Get Training on How to Use the Brio Insight Tool and The
Various Features of it and The Prolifics Input Tool, as Stan Had Said
Earlier, Contact The Help Desk at the Denver Business Center and
Schedule Folks to Come down and Visit Your State and Office and Provide
That Basic Training. They\'re Available. They\'re Happy to Come out and
to Do That for You. You Can Then Work Through the Individual Modules and
Get Some On‑site, Hands‑on Assistance in That Regard, and That\'s the
Way To Do It.

Brown: Adds We Draw ‑‑ as We Draw Our Program to a Close, I Would like
to Ask Each of Our Panelists to Share Any Final Thoughts or Observations
They Have about Their Work with M.I.S. and Their Experience with It.
Stan, I\'d like to Start with You. Any Final Thoughts or Comments That
You\'d like to Share with Our Viewing Audience?

Curtis: When I Started this Process, about a Year Ago, I Was Probably
the Most Skeptic. But Once I Got to See the Tool And the Availability of
the Data, You Know, it Was Really an Eye‑opener. But What I Would Really
like to Say Is We Wouldn\'t Be Here Today If it Wasn\'t for the Rulon
Duncans of the World, the Andy Smiths, the Freds, Budget Management
People in Roseburg, Oregon, or Wherever in the World Within BLM. They
Are the Ones That Are Giving Us Information and Asking Us, \"Can We Make
it Look this Way, Make it Look That Way?\" So My Hat Is off to the
Bureau Employees That Helped Get Us There.

Brown: Thanks. Roger? Final Thoughts?

Hildebeidel: Sure. I Think That, as Stan Said, One Of the Key Things
That Helped Make this Thing Successful Was The Input and Help from a
Whole Group of Folks Who Had Some Foresight and Some Initiative to Move
out from Where We Were into Something That Would Have Been Better and
More Helpful and Meet The Needs Better than Our Old Systems Did. So We
Owe a Lot of Thanks to Stan and to the Other People Who Participated and
Who Continue to Participate to Help the System Mature and Develop and
Become Even Better than it Is Today. We Also Were Fortunate in Having A
Vision and Leadership from Nina to Keep Things Going and Make Sure That
We Had the Support in the User Group and in The Project Team to Bring
this About. I\'m Real Excited about the M.I.S. I Think it Brings
Together in One Place Some Real Exciting, Modern Marriage of Technology
And Information That Will Help The Bureau Do a Better Job in Managing
its Resources in the Future. We All Know That Budgets Are Going to
Continue to Be Tight, And We Need to Do Our Best to Get the Best Bang
for Our Buck In Order to Do What\'s Really Important in this Bureau and
That\'s Manage Resources on the Ground. So I Think We\'re off on an
Exciting Time with the System, And I Hope Folks Will Kind of Take Their
Minds and Say, You Know, I Want to Go into this. I Want to Explore It. I
Want to Use It. And Maybe Let Go of Some of the Things That They\'re a
Little More Comfortable with from the Past, but by Getting into the
M.I.S. and Really Using It, They\'re Going to See Some Great Advantages
That They Haven\'t Had Available to Them in the past. This Is a System
That\'s for Everybody in the Bureau. It\'s Not Just for Budget Analysts
and Bean Counters or Whatever. It\'s Not Just for Specialists. It\'s a
System for Everybody in The Bureau to Use to Help Manage Their Work,
Managers, Program Leaders, Program Specialists, Field People, Washington
Office, Centers, Everywhere in the Organization. I Just Hope Folks Will
Get in And Use it and Find That it Works for Them and in Areas Where it
Can Be Made Better They\'ll Let Us Know and We Can Improve It. That\'s
Where I See Things Going.

Brown: Thanks, Roger. Finally, Nina, Your Thoughts?

Hatfield:, Thank You, Dave. I Am Truly Very Enthusiastic About the ‑‑
the Potential That We Have with a System like the M.I.S. It Seems to Me
That it Really Does Allow Us Again to Do less With less and We Have to
Recognize That We Are Going to Continue in a Constrained Budget
Environment. But What Make the M.I.S. So Exciting Is the Fact That it Is
So User Friendly, So Flexible, And It\'s Something That Our Folks Can
Help Customize and Continue to Meet Customer Needs As They Arise, as
People Begin To See New and Different Ways to Use It. It\'s Going to Be
Easy for Us to Adjust to it Meet Their Needs. But I Would like to
Emphasize That as We Talk about the Management Information System, It\'s
Easy to Think about it as Being a Financial System Because The Financial
Piece Is the One That We Have up and It\'s the Most Robust at this
Particular Point in Time, but Clearly Long Term We\'re Looking at this
System Offering Us the Capability to Tie Program Information with the
Financial Budget Business Information in a Way We Have Never Been Able
to Experience in the Bureau Before And I Think Again It\'s Going to Open
up Untold Opportunities for Us to Use the Information So That We Can
Continue to Try to Focus Our Resources on Managing Our Programs on the
Ground, and That\'s What this Is All about.

Brown: Thanks, Nina. That about Wraps it up for this M.I.S. Telecast.
I\'d like to Thank Our Panelists, Nina Hatfield, Stan Curtis, Roger
Hildebeidel for Their Presentations, and the NTC Production Crew for
Another Great Job, Fellas. And Special Thanks to Bob Donelson and Linda
Johnson for All Their Help in Preparing this Broadcast. We Hope That
this Overview Has Given You a Good Feel for the Features and Advantages
of BLM\'s Management Information System. Before We Leave I Would like to
Mention on October 7th and Through October 9th, NTC Will Be Broadcasting
Continuous Live Coverage of BLM\'s National Web Conference, Which Is
Being Held Right Here in Phoenix That Week. I\'d like to Remind All of
Our Downlink Coordinators to Fax in The Total Number of Viewers for Your
Office Who Watched Today\'s Show and to Send Your Numbers Immediately
after this Telecast. Thanks Again for Watching, and So Long from
Phoenix!

Announcer: to Help Your Office Participate in Future Telecasts, See the
BLM Satellite Downlink Guide and Visit the NTC Home Page on the World
Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet Address Is www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of
this Program and Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the Home Page.
For More Information on Upcoming Distance Learning Events, as Well as
Traditional Courses, Call the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500. Or Visit
the Home Page. This Broadcast Has Been a Production of the BLM National
Training Center.