Financial Services Assessment Guide

(SAG)

Phase I Exposure Draft

January 3, 2007
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Overview

The Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB), in collaboration with the federal

financial management community, is establishing a set of Financial Services Metrics

that will facilitate an assessment of financial services government-wide. These metrics

are designed to help identify opportunities to improve the performance and affordability

of the financial services provided by Shared Service Providers (SSPs) and federal

Agencies.

The Financial Services Metrics will be used for the following purposes:

 Enable SSPs to make more informed judgments regarding the performance and

affordability of the financial services they provide, and how they compare to their

competitors.

 Enable Agencies to make more informed judgments regarding the performance

and affordability of the financial services they provide in-house, how they

compare to other Agencies, and which SSP might best serve their needs as they

look at potential migrations of services under the FMLOB framework.

 Enable key stakeholders, including the Chief Financial Officers’ Council (CFOC),

the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and FMLOB, to make more

informed judgments regarding the financial performance of SSPs and Agencies,

and work with SSPs and Agencies on strategies to continually improve both

performance and affordability.

Performance reports will be provided to various audiences as appropriate, including the

CFOC, SSPs, Agencies and OMB, and may be made available to the public.

Performance will be evaluated against established baselines and applicable

performance benchmarks. As this effort progresses, reports will provide performance

trends, distinguish top performers from poor performers, identify improvement

opportunities, and identify the need for corrective actions as warranted.

By making SSP and Agency performance more transparent, establishing accountability

for improved results, and increasing competition among SSPs, both SSPs and federal

Agencies will be encouraged to continually improve both the performance and

affordability of the financial services they provide.

Performance metrics will be implemented using a phased approach. Phase I will focus

on defining and collecting an initial set of high value, low burden metrics. Phase II will

focus on refining these metrics, collecting an expanded set of metrics, improving

reporting capabilities and accountability mechanisms, and streamlining the collection

effort.

All Agencies will be required to report performance data through a single system

managed by the Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO). All data submitted to

FSIO will be considered public information unless specifically identified as confidential

and approved as such by FSIO.
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Implementation

The overall performance metrics will be implemented using a phased approach. Each

phase will build upon the previous phase’s accomplishments and will emphasize

communication and coordination with the financial management community.

Phase I

Phase I will be critical to building a baseline of performance and learning lessons for

subsequent phases. The Phase I measures have been selected from the two

mandatory service categories: IT Infrastructure Hosting and Administration and

Application Management.

The initial set of ten metrics was developed based on SSP and Agency responses to

the Value and Burden Survey conducted by the FMLoB during November and

December 2006. Specific attention was paid to ensuring the metrics selected offered

both a high value for potential users and a low burden of collection. The survey results

indicated that the collection of cost measures would pose a significant burden, and

therefore no cost metrics were selected for Phase I.

The Phase I metrics to be reported can be found in Appendix A.

By May 1, 2007 SSPs and Agencies must report data for March 2007 for the metrics

included in Appendix A. Data for subsequent months must be reported within 30 days

after the end of the reporting period.

Detailed descriptions of each Phase I metric are included in Appendix B. [Detailed

descriptions of each Phase I metric will be agreed to in upcoming workshops and

included in the final release of the Phase I Service Assessment Guide. FMLOB will

work with agencies to determine the appropriate detailed descriptions.]

Data will be submitted to FSIO according to the instructions for data entry included in

Appendix C. [Data entry instructions will be included in the final release of the Phase I

Service Assessment Guide. System development is currently underway by FSIO].

Initial reports will be generated and circulated by FSIO, though targets and goals for the

measures will not be set until a baseline can be established.

Phase II

Phase II will focus on expanding and refining the measures for IT Infrastructure Hosting

& Administration and Application Management Services, and add a limited set of

measures for the Systems Implementation and Business Process categories. The

FMLoB will also establish metric reporting procedures and tools to assist Agency

submission of performance data and address adding important cost measures and their

collection burdens. During this phase, lessons learned from Phase I will be

incorporated and result in an update to this guide.
Frequency Legend: A = Annually B = Bi-annually Q = Quarterly M = Monthly W = Weekly F = Following Event 4

Appendix A. FMLoB Phase I Financial Performance Measures

Performance

Measurement Measurement Description

Measurement

Methodology

(Reporting Frequency)

Service Category: IT Infrastructure Hosting and Administration

(measures 1-6)

1 System Availability Hours System is Available, expressed as a proportion

of hours the system is contractually obligated to be

available.

Available hours /

Obligated Hours * 100

(M, Q, B)

2 Call Closure Rate

within specific time

periods

Time between the opening of an incident and its final

closure. Final closure of the ticket often requires a waiting

period or confirmation with the end user after the issue has

been resolved. Include the total time here from inception

through post resolution.

Number of calls resolved

on the first call + the next

X business hours / total

calls * 100 (recommend

4-, 8-, and 24-hour time

periods) (M)

3 Restoration time for All

Hosting-Caused

Outages

Amount of time required to restore hosting-caused

outages

Total amount of time

required to restore

hosting-caused outages /

total number of outages

(F)

4 Hours/Days Elapsed

Since Previous Backup

The time elapsed since the data was previously backed

up. To be compared with the backup interval required

according to the agency's service standards.

Count of Hours/Days

Elapsed Since Previous

Backup (M)

5 Number of Hosting

System Shutdowns

Total number of incidents resulting in a shutdown of the

primary hosting system (e.g. servers), such that end

users were unable to use the FM system applications.

Sum of Shutdown

Incidents (M, Q, A)

6 Number of Security

Incidents Within the

Past Year

Sum total of incidents involving improper login into the

servers, unauthorized access to data, or unauthorized

activities performed on the FM system server.

Sum total of Security

Incidents (A)
Frequency Legend: A = Annually B = Bi-annually Q = Quarterly M = Monthly W = Weekly F = Following Event 5

Performance

Measurement Measurement Description

Measurement

Methodology

(Reporting Frequency)

Service Category: Application Management

(measures 7-10)

7 Average time to restore

mission critical

application functionality

Following a failure of a mission critical application, the

elapsed time to restore functionality since the time of

the outage (or, the time outage was reported, if the

outage time itself is unknown).

Total time to restore

mission critical

applications. (F)

8 Average Report

Production Time

Average cycle time for producing a single report. Sum total cycle time per

report/ sum of the number

of reports executed (M)

9 Planned Downtime

(Monthly/ Yearly)

Planned periods of system unavailability, during

otherwise scheduled available time, during a given

period of time

Sum total minutes of

planned downtime during

a given period of time

(W, M, A)

10 Average Response

Time for User Access

Requests

Average time required for security administrators to

grant requested access, measured from time-date

stamp of request to completion of task.

Sum total of elapsed time

between request and

granting of user access /

number of users (M, Q)
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Appendix B. FMLoB Financial Performance Measure Definitions

Future Development: Detailed descriptions

of the Phase I performance measures.
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Appendix C. FMLoB Performance Metric Reporting Procedures

Future Development: Instructions for

reporting performance measurement data.