2004 C.I.P.A. Winners

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New Government Financial System Improves Decision Making and Fiscal Control Province Wide

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Ontario’s Ministry of Finance spearheaded the implementation of the province’s new Integrated Financial Information System (IFIS) to give the government a state-of-the-art system that is dramatically improving the way Ontario manages its finances. Replacing disparate financial systems in ministries and central agencies throughout the province with a single, integrated system is yielding substantial benefits for all the province’s stakeholders, including taxpayers.

There’s Gotta Be A Better Way!

By the mid 1990s, financial information management within the Ontario Public Service (OPS) had become a major challenge, with 17 core financial systems and more than 100 smaller systems in place across the province. Because most of these systems were incompatible with one another, business processes and rules were inconsistent from ministry to ministry, making a top-level corporate approach to controllership and reporting extremely difficult at best.

Ontario’s Public Service consists of 62,000 employees working from hundreds of OPS locations and organized into 24 ministries as well as various corporate bodies and central agencies. Operating with an annual budget approximating $80 billion, the OPS provides a full spectrum of services to all of Ontario’s twelve million citizens.

Along with cost of operating, maintaining and upgrading all these different accounting and revenue systems, there was considerable duplication of effort in data entry and in checking, validating, processing and reconciliations. In addition, the manual reporting required to bridge the differences between systems made rollup an extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive exercise for those organizations that require a government-wide financial view, such as the Ontario Financing Authority (OFA). The OFA, which is responsible for managing the province’s debt, needs timely, top-level financial information to support the development of its borrowing strategy. Similarly, the Fiscal & Financial Policy Division of the Ministry of Finance needs a reliable, enterprise-wide financial picture for developing the economic forecast and the public budget.

"Because we had a patchwork of different, standalone, custom-designed systems, it was difficult to get a full picture of what was going on in a timely fashion," explains David Fulford, Assistant Deputy Minister, Ministry of Finance, Ontario. "Financial information tended to stay within individual ministry systems, and centralized reporting was very difficult to achieve."

One Province ... One Solution

In its 1995 report, the Ontario Financial Review Commission (OFRC) recommended that the government bring in a new, government-wide financial information system to better manage the province’s finances. As well, the Office of the Provincial Auditor made a similar recommendation in its 1997 report. In response, the government, through the Ministry of Finance, initiated the Integrated Financial Information System (IFIS) project.

By replacing disparate and incompatible financial systems all across the OPS with a single, integrated system, IFIS would provide a uniform approach to financial management province wide. And by providing better financial data, enabling better and faster decision making, and supporting a higher level of accountability, IFIS would significantly help the OPS improve financial management in all areas.

The business case for the IFIS project was approved in the Fall of 1998; and following an extensive period that included creation of a tendering document outlining 700 requirements, a competitive bid process, procurement of the software and development of the system, an IFIS pilot went live in November, 2002 involving one small and one medium-sized ministry. Following the successful pilot, full rollout proceeded in waves of three to seven Ministries at a time over the ensuing two years, finishing with the last three ministries going live in October, 2004.

Large, Complex, But Achievable

Although IFIS consists primarily of the Oracle Financials 11i application running on Sun Microsystems Enterprise servers, the infrastructure integrates a complex array of additional hardware and software components from industry-leading companies such as Microsoft, Veritas, Apache, Hummingbird, Checkpoint, Sun, Oracle, Netscape and others. All these components are structured into a three-tier solution – database tier, applications tier and desktop tier – giving users Web browser access to IFIS.

Even though the Oracle Financials application is well-proven, the magnitude of its implementation in Ontario made IFIS the largest Oracle application project in North America. Replacing all the financial systems across the province with one integrated system, and dealing with the number and complexity of interfaces required to enable compatibility with existing sub-systems, required considerable expertise and innovation. To accomplish this, government and private-sector staff worked side by side. IBM was engaged as the prime contractor of a consortium that also included Oracle, Sierra, and RFH Associates to provide the project management, business solution and technical expertise in enterprise- wide systems; and the government’s own corporate Information & Information Technology (I&IT) organization played a key role in ensuring IFIS consistency with Ontario’s e-government strategy.

Change Management Challenge Rivals Technical Complexity

It was recognized right from the beginning of the project that the implementation of IFIS was as much, if not more, a change management exercise as a technology implementation project. Due to the size, complexity and scope of the initiative, buy-in from all parties was required during both the planning and implementation phases to ensure success; and representatives from all ministries and central agencies would have to participate actively in the process to provide knowledge and expertise on OPS processes and policies, and to allow them to help shape the ultimate solution.

As ministries began to see the implications of moving from a ministry-based to a corporate-based financial system however, some innovative approaches to change management – including extensive communications, consultation and reviews with hundreds of OPS staff at all levels – were employed to convince all parties that the business benefits, both corporate and ministry specific, of moving to a single system outweighed the pain of getting there.

In addition, the need for individual ministries to re-align how they execute various business processes and financial transactions on an ongoing basis to match the standardized IFIS design point – such as the degree to which day-to-day transaction processing tasks are shared between individual ministries and the government’s Shared Services Bureau – also drove the need for the IFIS project team to overcome significant change management challenges.

"Successfully bringing all the individual ministries and central agencies on board – and getting them to cross long-standing vertical boundaries – was a truly enormous accomplishment," says Fulford

Part of the innovation that characterized the IFIS implementation project stemmed from the need to show OPS staff how to use the new system. An aggressive IFIS training program that resulted in well over 12,000 enrolments across the province represented one of the largest training initiatives in the history of the Ontario government. This ongoing program is continually improving to meet ministry needs and now includes a series of Web-based instructor-led modules, allowing users to remain at their desks while getting the benefit of real-time support from an IFIS trainer.

All Stakeholders Reap The Rewards

With the final three remaining ministries now being brought on stream, the results of the IFIS implementation are already evident – and all of the provincial government’s stakeholders are seeing significant benefits.

• More-timely financial data and improved cash flow information is being made available to the Ontario Financing Authority, leading to better-informed decisions on short-term cash investments;

• For suppliers, a more streamlined relationship makes it easier to interact with government; and electronic tracking provides information faster on the status of outstanding invoices;

• A common process for maintaining a corporate supplier database enables buyers to negotiate more favourable prices through higher-volume purchase orders

• For management, up-to-date, detailed reports on spending and commitments allows better control over expenditures and greater decision-making flexibility;

• A single, uniform electronic process, from procurement to payment, reduces cumbersome manual processes for government financial analysts and accounting staff and improves information integrity;

• Through the electronic consolidation of ministry financial reports, IFIS supports the government’s commitments to enhance accountability and transparency;

• The operational efficiencies made possible by IFIS will be a significant benefit to all the Ontario taxpayers.

The IFIS team has taken the government from having many different, highly customized financial systems that are difficult and expensive to maintain and upgrade, to a standardized, single-system environment based on non-customized versions of the industry-leading financial applications.

"By following a ‘no customization’ policy, we have delivered a system that can easily absorb ongoing technological innovation on all layers – from applications to the guts of the database – thus positioning the province to keep current with technology in a timely and cost-effective way," concludes David Fulford.

A 2004 CIPA Winner!

For its exceptional and innovative application of Information Technology to solve real-world business problems and bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, the Ontario Ministry of Finance was awarded a 2004 Canadian Information Productivity Award of Excellence in the Organizational Transformation category.

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