Financial Management Initiatives

Return on investment is significant from a standpoint of expanded (analytical) capability and reduced manpower costs at the program office level investigating false positives (payments which were deemed appropriate). OCFO (Now OFO) terminated the Oversight contract for software that was used to support the PIMA investment in FY 2015 because we determined that the software produced a large number of false positives and did not provide us with the capacity and flexibility to tailor our integrity checks to best support the Department grant programs. We modified our approach to this investment starting in FY 2016 by leveraging existing Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) system infrastructure, which includes SAS-certified staff who work on site. The in-house infrastructure will allow the Department to refine and enhance integrity checks, as required, with no outside contract negotiations or modifications, and will realize cost savings of $75k from FY 2017 onward through transfer of EDUCATE resources to the analytic infrastructure investment for the benefit of enterprise-wide use. SAS is still being utilized in FY 2020 and onward, further increasing any potential cost savings. The new PIMA tool has allowed us to work closely with the program offices in identifying anomalies by program activity, thus increasing the effectiveness of improper payments detection and reducing program office staff workload. PIMA also has decreased part of the workload in reporting potential improper payments in the Agency Financial Report (AFR) in FY 2020 and will continue to be utilized as such. Future upgrades are scheduled to increase the operability of the application for program office usage as well as add other integrity checks moving forward.

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