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.