Financial Crimes Enforcement 

Network

FY 2016

Capital Investment Plan
1

Investment Name: BSA IT Modernization

Type of Investment: Major IT Investment

Description:

FinCENs BSA IT Modernization initiative is a Treasury effort to provide and maintain a 

modernized information technology foundation to collect, analyze, and share Bank Secrecy Act 

(BSA) data.

Investment Anticipated Outlay: (In Millions of $): 

Type PY-1 and Prior PY 

2014

CY 

2015

BY 

2016

BY+1 

2017

BY+2 

2018

BY+3 

2019 BY+4 and Beyond Total

DME Sub Total (Including Gov FTE) Costs 78.99 2.50 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 83.49

Total DME funding 2.50 1.00 1.00 4.50

Unallocated DME funding 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

O&M Sub Total (Including Gov FTE) Costs 30.19 23.19 26.60 26.58 27.58 27.58 27.58 27.58 216.88

Total O&M funding 23.19 26.60 26.58 76.36

Unallocated O&M funding 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Total Cost (Including Gov FTE) 109.18 25.69 27.60 27.58 27.58 27.58 27.58 27.58 300.37

Total Gov FTE Cost 7.58 2.14 4.06 4.04 4.04 4.04 4.04 4.04 33.97

Number of FTE represented by costs 31.00 8.00 16.00 17.00 17.00 17.00 17.00 17.00 140.00

Summary of Purpose, Goals, and Benefits: 

FinCEN's BSA IT Modernization is a 10 year investment and began in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010. 

Under this investment, FinCEN has built a modernized information technology (IT) foundation to 

collect, analyze, and share Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data. This investment directly supports 

FinCEN's mission to safeguard the financial system from illicit use and combat money 

laundering and promote national security through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of 

financial intelligence and strategic use of financial authorities. FinCEN's mission supports 

Treasury's strategic goal to protect our national security through targeted financial actions. To 

successfully fulfill its mission, FinCEN relies on secure, advanced IT to manage the collection, 

processing, analysis, storage, and dissemination of BSA information that contributes to the 

soundness and confidence in America's financial system. FinCEN is the administrator of the 

Bank Secrecy Act, which allows stakeholders to combine this financial intelligence information 

with other information sources to address issues related securing economic and financial 

stability, such as detecting mortgage fraud, or instances of insider abuse or market 

manipulation. Prior to the four-year, development effort that completed in FY 2014, FinCEN 

faced the challenge of how to enable easier compliance and streamline BSA information 

capture for FinCEN's financial community stakeholders while maximizing the value and impact 

of BSA information for its regulator, law enforcement and intelligence community stakeholders. 

This investment addresses these challenges by providing an enterprise-wide information 

management and analysis framework that equips law enforcement and financial industry 

regulators with better decision-making abilities and increased value of BSA information through 

enhanced data integrity and analytical tools. This allows law enforcement and regulators to 

focus their limited resources on the areas of shifting illicit criminal activities and vulnerabilities 

effecting the soundness and stability of the U.S. financial system. In addition, the BSA IT 

Modernization investment enables easier compliance and streamlines BSA information capture 

for FinCEN's financial community through its enhancement of electronic filing systems for filers, 
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standardization of financial data with existing financial community standards, and more timely 

and useful feedback on BSA information filings and the use of BSA information.

Return on Investment: 

In FY 2014, FinCEN completed its four-year, BSA IT Modernization Program, which modernized 

its entire technical environment, introduced state-of-the-art technology, and is maintained at a 

Government co-located site, supporting Treasury's data center consolidation efforts. Since 

FinCEN chose to build a new systems environment using Government Owned Assets as its 

alternative, the return on investment (ROI) reflects more qualitative benefits, although some 

quantitative, estimated benefits do apply. As a result, FinCEN successfully assumed all system 

ownership responsibility from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), thus significantly reducing the 

IRS's operations and maintenance costs. In addition, the Program has allowed FinCEN to 

mandate electronic filing for all Title 31 reports. In FY 2014, 96% of BSA filings were filed 

electronically. This new environment has provided FinCEN greater flexibility and the ability to 

more quickly respond to its stakeholder's demands. The new infrastructure has established 

more effective data security and audit technologies, including two-factor authentication, to 

maximize BSA data confidentiality and integrity. This initiative has improved time to respond to 

changes by reducing the number of work days required to develop and implement moderate 

impact changes to its BSA reports. Now in a steady state environment, FinCEN continues to 

improve with release planning efforts to address mandated changes to data collection tools, as 

well as defects and enhancements. In the area of data analysis, FinCEN has introduced more 

sophisticated web-based, analytical tools to its users. This improves the value of BSA 

information to law enforcement agencies and regulators by delivering data to its customers in a 

more timely fashion. This is achieved by decreasing the average number of hours from receipt 

to availability for query or dissemination to customers by nearly 40 percent. The bureau's 

capacity to proactively identify trends and patterns in the data has been improved, the number 

of reusable data sets continues to rise saving time and resources, and sharing of analytical 

products assists law enforcement in enhancing their anti-money laundering strategies. In FY

2014, FinCEN completed the Broker Information Exchange efforts, which will deploy proven 

work item management technologies.

Requirements/ Benefits/ Mandates: 

Legislative Mandate: 31 U.S.C. 310 establishes FinCEN as a bureau within the Treasury 

Department and describes FinCEN's duties and powers to include maintaining a governmentwide data access service with a range of financial transactions information.

Audit Finding or Material Weakness: N/A

Agency Strategic Plan / Annual Performance Plan: The FY 2014-2018 Strategic Plan for 

FinCEN illustrates the broad role the bureau plays in safeguarding the financial system from 

illicit use and combating money laundering and promoting national security. As both the 

financial intelligence unit (FIU) for the United States and the federal government's primary antimoney laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulator, FinCEN draws on 

a broad range of capabilities in technology, intelligence analysis, liaison, enforcement, and 

policy development to perform its work. Additionally, strong public-private sector partnerships 

are crucial for us to achieve success. They serve as the foundation for protecting the financial 

system and national security.

Presidential Priority: N/A

Other Requirement: N/A

Accomplishments: 

In FY 2014, FinCEN completed the last functionality for BSA IT Modernization on time and 
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under budget, and obtained Full Operating Capability. As a result, the investment entered 

Steady State and the focus shifted to post implementation monitoring, addressing defects and 

requests for change, and enhancing the end user training capabilities.

Planned Objectives and Accomplishments: 

In FY 2015 and FY 2016, FinCEN plans to continue supporting the operations and maintenance 

of the BSA IT Modernization investment with regularly-scheduled maintenance releases 

addressing any defects and minor requests for change and enhancements. In addition, FinCEN 

will complete several small, development efforts to enhance the analytical foundation 

established under the four-year program.

Development, modernization, and enhancement timeframe: 

BY+1: The BSA IT Modernization Program will be in steady state (O and M) with regularly 

scheduled technical refreshes as appropriate. There are no planned projects at this time.

BY+2: The BSA IT Modernization Program will be in steady state (O and M) with regularly 

scheduled technical refreshes as appropriate. There are no planned projects at this time.

BY+3: The BSA IT Modernization Program will be in steady state (O and M) with regularly 

scheduled technical refreshes as appropriate. There are no planned projects at this time.

BY+4: The BSA IT Modernization Program will be in steady state (O and M) with regularly 

scheduled technical refreshes as appropriate. There are no planned projects at this time.

Performance Evaluation and Metrics: 

Metric Description Measurement 

Condition

Reporting 

Frequency

Unit Of 

Measure CY Target Latest Actual Result

Date of Latest 

Actual Result

Average number of hours from receipt to availability for query Under target Monthly Hours 60.00 36.00 12/31/2014

Number of days to implement changes to BSA data collection 

tools Under target Annual Days 175.00 137.00 08/31/2014

Percent of customers who report overall satisfaction with 

external-facing, mission-critical search tool (FinCEN Query) Over target Annual Percentage 70.00 68.00 09/30/2014

Number of queries generated in FinCEN Query System per 

month Over target Monthly Number 560000.00 497742.00 12/31/2014

Cost per BSA filing transaction (electronically filed) Under target Annual Dollars 0.11

BSA IT Mod mission critical system availability Over target Quarterly Percentage 99.00 99.00 12/31/2014