January 14, 2016
On Thursday, January 14, the National Academy of Public Administration and Grant Thornton hosted a Symposium on the topic “Pulling it All Together – Shared Services and the Working Capital Fund”.
The quarterly WCF Symposium aims to develop discussions to adopt a more streamlined WCF approach. Through this collaborative effort, government executives and managers can discuss WCF issues, share lessons learned, and gather best practices. Agency leaders share their insights to implement and sustain Working Capital Funds.
Dan Blair, President and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, welcomed the group and thanked the presenters. Dave Mader serves as Controller for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Beth Angerman is the Executive Director of Unified Shared Services Management in the General Services Agency (GSA). Brian Nichols is a Policy Analyst for the OMB.
The presentation focused on OMB’s work in supporting shared services across federal agencies. The objective is to improve efficiencies and service delivery through commonly agreed upon tools and approaches. Currently, multiple shared service initiatives are independently led with inconsistent guidance across service areas, federal agencies, lines of business, and providers. This can impact the ability to make long-term investments, a scale for large customers, and expand service offerings. OMB reviewed more than 100 documents to identify improvement possibilities, including case studies, industry reports, policy directives, and guidance. To achieve a consistent funding model, a three-step guide is recommended. At first, a common interpretation of authority must be established. Therefore, an agency has to issue guidance defining the calculation for retained earnings (annual v. cumulative). Most importantly, consistency in operating reserve policy including permitted uses of reserves should be achieved. In a second step, consistent pricing methodology and governance are enforced. It is about defining a consistent costing and pricing methodology across providers, including the option for service bundles and alignment to service catalogs. Thirdly, transparency can be improved by implementing ProviderStat—a performance management framework promoting oversight and transparency of shared services operations, investment plans, budgets, and growth strategies.
A good portion of the following discussion focused on the intersection of shared services and the WCF to identify opportunities for continued success. It was moderated by Jim Taylor, Managing Director for Grant Thornton’s Global Sector Practice, and WCF Working Group Chair Jennifer Ayers, WCF Manager in the Department of Commerce. The roundtable featured an introduction of the Unified Shared Services Management (USSM) office, which is a new government-wide management and oversight model for mission support functions and will serve as a shared service ecosystem working across functions, providers, and consumers. This office will be led by Beth Angerman. The main challenge in moving forward with shared services is customer service and capital needs, and the questions of how to fit both into programs reliant on appropriated funds. The speakers proposed that revolving funds are central in the evolution of shared services. Within shared services, a common complaint is the uneven playing field with financial management for the departments involved, which may prevent the offering of specific services or expanding the model to cabinet-level agencies. Revolving funds offer the ability to level the financial playing field. More broadly, both sides are experiencing a need to compile their lessons learned to help ensure smooth future adaptation. It was heard from this presentation that OMB and GSA are working to create a “playbook” based on lessons learned so that the investments are implemented consistently across agencies as more agencies and departments adopt the shared services model.
The meeting was convened with the agreement that an overview of the event would be shared with the group in attendance as well as those who could not attend and that details of the next convening would be communicated shortly. I was also agreed that the group’s organizers would take steps to assist the group in establishing channels of communication for sharing best practices and answering technical questions outside of the quarterly meetings.