Early metrics didn’t look good, so the agency will adopt shared-services model
One size doesn’t fit all for the Homeland Security Department when it comes to financial management.
Officials decided to completely overhaul its Elec-tronically Managing Enter-prise Resources for Gov-ernment Effectiveness and Efficiency 2 (Emerge2) program and let department components choose among an array of existing financial-service providers. DHS then will pool the data in a warehouse to allow financial managers to drill down into separate components’ financial records.
“We now plan to use a center-of-excellence model,” said Andy Maner, DHS’ outgoing chief financial officer.
The Emerge2 project will not be rebranded, though there may be some new contractors, he added.
DHS now plans to let its components choose among five DHS providers of financial management services as well as outside federal agencies that provide the services, such as the Interior Department’s National Business Center and the ERP services of the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt.
New direction
“Everybody in DHS is going to go on a shopping trip,” Maner said.
DHS has spent $9 million on Emerge2 so far with prime contractor BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Va., Maner said. The total potential value of the Emerge2 contracts was $229 million.
Maner holds that the department gleaned a full $9 million of value from the first stab at Emerge2 by gathering the components’ functional requirements, preparing a portal to be used by financial managers and developing training and rollout plans, among other deliverables.
Work on DHS’ financial management system slowed to a crawl last year after DHS allowed a task order by BearingPoint to expire in June. DHS halted the work after Emerge2 fell behind schedule and exceeded costs.
Maner said he suspended the project after its metrics began to signal that Emerge2 was missing deadlines.
“When I saw we were off track in February [2005], I brought in the vendor [BearingPoint] and said, ‘What could we do better?’ ” Maner said. “I’m not going to turn this into big integrator bashing.”
DHS’ decision to point Emerge2 in a new direction comes in the wake of a similar move by the Interior Department, which is recompeting its ERP project after ousting the prime contractor, also BearingPoint, from the job.
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