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A Federal government organization was having problems reconciling its government purchase card (p-cards) purchases with the bank providing the credit card service. P-cards were issued to authorized individuals of the government facility to do micro-purchases that were typically under $2,500.00. In addition, this made it difficult to identify purchases that could potentially be fraudulent. Starry Associates recognized that there was a huge void in terms of managing the purchase cards transactions. As a result, internal funds were invested to design and develop commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) that would assist this government agency in managing and auditing its p-card purchases and transactions. The product became know as MACCS®. MACCS® is a web-based, Oracle database, COTS product that offers solutions for invalid purchase tracking, forgotten disputes, credits not received, lost receipts, illegible or incomplete handwritten entries in logbooks, miss-keyed information, unauthorized and unmanaged spending, hard to reconcile invoices, manual entries of funding codes on the invoices, incomplete accounting report late payments to the bank, and the lack of an audit trail. Issues that arouse from this:

• The government health facility could not challenge certain purchases that the bank claimed were made
• It was cumbersome for the data to be transferred to the accounting system
• The reports on the p-card purchases were inaccurate and lacked the timely representation of the charges

Starry Associates identified this as an opportunity to assist the government in providing solutions for these issues. Starry Associates designed and developed a web-based solution so that the cardholders and approvers could manage their purchase transactions from their computer. The MACCS® solution has allowed our client to manage the agency's purchase card transactions and pay the bank invoice timely. Starry Associates has been tasked to add features and to modify MACCS® to accommodate change requests from both the bank and the Government Agency that Starry Associates was contracted.

Within two months after MACCS® was implemented and became operational, the government agency received its return on its investment in rebates for invoices paid to the bank timely. This return on investment, and how Starry Associates implemented the new application, left the government agency highly satisfied with MACCS®. In addition,MACCS® has since received many favorable results from audit assessors regarding how the MACCS® system has managed the procurement card transactions.

Federal Financial Management systems are being implemented without concern for meeting auditability requirements, which are required.

Starry Associates provided Federal financial personnel to take the role of audit support. Starry Associates staff assured sufficient audit trail and reconciliation capability was implemented during the creation of the solution. In support of reconciliation and audits efforts, Starry Associates:

• Validated functionality of user logon and function tracking
• Researched the data fields which lacked sufficient traceability within the system
• Validated the audit trail
• Assured that all financial requirements were met
• Provided reconcilable reports for audit requests
• Developed a strategy for application integrity which validated that all processes ran successfully with the expected outcomes
• Developed a strategy for system (data) integrity which validated that all interface files processed successfully with sufficient tracking of errors at all control points
• Developed a strategy for financial integrity that reconciled all records in the subledgers, and from the subledgers to the General Ledger
• Provided operations support to assure the application, system, and financial integrity was maintained each day

Due to the above efforts, the Federal financial management system produced processes and reports that successfully passed the audit and reconciliation requirements of a SAS70 and financial audit. In addition, the legacy systems received a clean audit opinion. The Starry Associates staff is currently working with the implementation of a new financial management system and is working with the client to achieve the same goal.

Some of our clients have a multitude of disparate financial-based systems that have been approved for consolidation as well as financial software upgrade.

Starry Associates, has performed in-depth system analysis of the disparate systems for our clients. The research has included:

• Business processes related to each of the disparate systems
• Data fields within the systems software
• Definition of challenges in consolidating the systems and upgrading the financial software

The result is a complete analysis and mapping document of the systems and financial software within six months. Starry Associates provided the requirements and definition of the system consolidation as well as the design document for the new upgraded system and financial software. The six month turnaround on the analysis surpassed the expectation of the client.

Our client's staff is experiencing lengthy system run-time processes which are impeding the staffs work efficiency.

Starry Associates is known for providing solutions. Starry Associates provides simple, cost-effective solutions for our client's dynamic challenges. Our success is based upon the following components:

• Strategies
• Skill Sets
• Solutions
• Structures
• Systems

The result is a complete analysis and mapping document of the systems and financial software within six months. Starry Associates provided the requirements and definition of the system consolidation as well as the design document for the new upgraded system and financial software. The six month turnaround on the analysis surpassed the expectation of the client.

A Federal organization was in the process of transitioning their Federal financial accounting system from the legacy accounting system to an Oracle Federal Financial solution. The legacy financial system remains a critical system for this Federal organization for its financial and accounting operations, as well as the ability to generate its financial statements. In addition, there was another firm responsible for performing the software maintenance for the legacy accounting system. The Federal organization had problems with the type of support that was being provided by the support firm. Some of the support issues were involving the maintenance, where the maintenance changes were slow, and often late in being implemented, deficiencies in proper documentation of the programs, and most importantly the contracted services were not responsive to the needs of the client/customer.

Starry Associates re-competed for the contract and was awarded the contract to continue the software maintenance support. The awarded contract was due in part to Starry Associates knowledge and expertise in financial and accounting systems. Starry Associates was able to quickly assign resources that have extremely strong technical backgrounds in IDMS-R database and COBOL that understand the functionality of the system. In addition, the technical resources worked with the U.S. financial accounting staff analysts to properly interpret what had to be done to satisfy the diverse change requirements.

Starry Associates staff members were able to effectively support the client by providing high quality work which assisted the client in meeting their deadlines. Our staff made the transition seamless from the former software support contractor, who had been their sole support for approximately 10 years, in less than 30 days time.Starry Associates has since been contracted to help the client in its conversion to the Oracle Federal Financials solution due to the success of a similar project. Our company is known throughout the agency and the Departments as a partner who works with their clients to accomplish their goals and successes.

Starry Associates was contracted to upgrade the TaskForce&trade, PartsForce&trade, and PropertyForce&trade fleet, parts, and property management software from a HP 3000 system to the PC/Network version for the county level government in the mid-west. The reason for this conversion was planned obsolescence; Hewlett-Packard was no longer going to support the HP 3000 hardware or software. In addition, this made it difficult to identify purchases that could potentially be fraudulent. Starry Associates recognized that there was a huge void in terms of managing the purchase cards transactions. As a result, internal funds were invested to design and develop commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) that would assist this government agency in managing and auditing its p-card purchases and transactions. The product became know as MACCS®. MACCS® is a web-based, Oracle database, COTS product that offers solutions for invalid purchase tracking, forgotten disputes, credits not received, lost receipts, illegible or incomplete handwritten entries in logbooks, miss-keyed information, unauthorized and unmanaged spending, hard to reconcile invoices, manual entries of funding codes on the invoices, incomplete accounting report late payments to the bank, and the lack of an audit trail. A few of the challenges were:

• Data Conversion from old legacy software to new software
• Eliminate erroneous data prior to data conversion to new system
• No disruption to current business workflow processes
• Project time line - had to be completed within five months of the scheduled start date
• This was to be an integrated turnkey solution with new hardware, operating system, and security software

Starry Associates met with the county project manager and fleet staff to jointly develop a strategy, and a plan for success. A strategy, project plan, and work breakdown structure was developed. The Starry Associates team as well as the client team worked together collaboratively in the planning and implementation of this effort. The HP 9000 system was selected as the new successor, also selected was a UNIX operating system and Symantec security software. The Oracle database was to be housed on the new HP 9000 system and was going to be the primary repository for the fleet management software. Starry Associates with the client planned the conversion of the legacy database and prepared the data for conversion. Starry Associate's team reviewed the data and performed the initial data conversion at the Starry Associates facility. Starry Associates conducted several levels of testing throughout the process to ensure system operational integrity. After successful testing, Starry Associates installed the software application at the client facility. In addition, Starry Associates had trained the client staff a week prior of the "go-live" date so that the training would be effective for the employees come the following Monday morning when the system went "live".

Starry Associates was dedicated to making the project a success and their client successful. The weekend conversion, 48 hour conversion, was a success with the entire system being fully operational on Monday morning. The county's fleet was ranked 6th by the Utility Fleet Management of the top ten best managed fleets in North America in 2004.

All Federal government agencies Several clients of Starry Associates are experiencing the difficult challenges of transitioning their legacy financial systems. This transition or change can be difficult in and of itself if not managed properly. To change from one system to another system involves several aspects; one aspect being how people will interact with the new system - primarily new GUI interfaces, for this will impact how they do business and how effective they will be in accomplishing their daily tasks. Starry Associates was approached by one of their clients who were experiencing such an issue. The system integrator employed by this Government organization did not understand the organizations Federal financial and accounting functions, as well as the specific business processes associated to the system, which would have an adverse impact to some affiliated Government organizations. The integrators were having a difficult time understanding the users' requirements which meant that they would not be able to implement a successful solution. This lack of understanding had frustrated this Government organization in the past when processes did not meet business needs and implementation times exceeded project timelines - resulting in cost over-runs.

Starry Associates provides functional and technical staff members that are knowledgeable in both federal and financial management systems and the ability to implement these large complex systems successfully. Our subject matter experts include retired Federal employees who understand these systems well. We assign highly qualified individuals into each position of a project team to address the dynamic and complex issues of these large financial systems.

Starry Associates has supported the system integrators and agencies that have hired new employees to provide the SME support required. When Starry Associates has been involved with a conversion project, the client has saved millions of dollars or costly delays.

For Federal government agencies, the year-end closing of the accounting books begins shortly after the end of the Federal government's fiscal year. All Federal government agencies have to perform a final reconciliation before the books are closed and before new books can be opened for the new fiscal year. This process can take up to three months.

A number of our clients require assistance with operating and maintaining their financial management systems. Some specific issues faced by our clients were the periodic processing, closing, and reporting requirements. It was discovered that the monthly closing and reporting processes were slowly gaining time as more demand was placed on their systems

Starry Associates expertise in the periodic processing requirements and financial management systems provided the Federal client with the following solutions:

• Optimized and well-tuned the closing procedure.
• Continued tuning the software to improve its performance.
• Addressed the business processes associated with the month-end and year-end closing to reduce the effort involved in reconciliation.

The main system closed the month-end and quarter-end within 24 hours, and year-end within 48 hours. For the new Federal financial management system, Starry Associates had improved the timeframe provided by the system integrator by 300% for month-end, and quarter-end was closed within the same 24-hour time period. This new optimized and well-tuned closing procedure was achieved by less than half of the number of individuals, representing a more than 50% cut in cost. For the closing of FY 2006, it took less than 36 hours, a phenomenal accomplishment!

The Federal Financial Management Systems for civilian Federal Government agencies are being implemented without sufficient federal experience. The integrator firms that have been contracted to implement these Oracle Federal Financials systems have lacked the technical skill sets as well as the functional skill sets to successfully implement the solutions and meet the clients' requirements. Unfortunately, millions of dollars are being spent on these complex systems without significant return on investment and the clients' deliverables being met.

Starry Associates provides functional and technical staff members that are knowledgeable in both federal and financial management systems and the ability to implement these large complex systems successfully. Our subject matter experts include retired Federal employees who understand these systems well. We assign highly qualified individuals into each position of a project team to address the dynamic and complex issues of these large financial systems. Our experience spans several fields from mainframes to web-based applications, as well as IT system developers to financial management expertise. This variety of skill sets provides the depth and breadth that is needed to implement and support a federal financial management solution - successfully.

The result has exceeded the Federal client's satisfaction in the transition, implementation, and operation of the financial systems. Starry Associates has been able to meet the challenge with the right people, with the right skill sets, to assist our clients in these major initiatives. We have been able to assist the Federal clients in meeting their deadlines, and and reducing overall budgeted dollars.

All Federal government agencies have been directed by the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic travel solution.

Starry Associates was contracted by a government agency to investigate their legacy travel system and interfaces into the accounting system. From the analysis, Starry Associates then developed and implemented the "Back Office" interfaces into the new e-Travel system. Once the e-Travel System was in a production state, Starry Associates derived a crosswalk process that was applied to the financial management system. This allowed for the transparent conversion of data, and an immediate "go-live" support of the e-Travel system upon completion of the financial management system conversion. In addition, Starry Associates completed the project ahead of schedule, including program changes and testing, and held to a quality process of 100% reconciliation of the values within the system. In addition, Starry Associates passed all of the audit and process reviews (SAS70 and OMB's A-123) requirements.

To date, Starry Associates has assisted this government agency in successfully going through two major conversions of data and financial accounting transactions regarding the eTravel system. In addition, this successful conversion allowed this government agency to become established as the Center for Excellence for the enterprise-wide e-Travel solution.

Printed reports had to be manually parsed out and separated from the bulk print jobs, which was time consuming. Reports were distributed manually by mail cart or mailed to the department due to geographic location, which inevitably delayed the overall process. United States Federal organization was challenged with two major issues as a service support center:

• Financial staff not being able to obtain financial and accounting reports on a timely basis
• Large commercial printers that printed multiple reports contiguously on perforated paper leading to high, bulky, unmanageable stacks of paper.
• Printed reports had to be manually parsed out and separated from the bulk print jobs, which was time consuming. Reports were distributed manually by mail cart or mailed to the department due to geographic location, which inevitably delayed the overall process.

Starry Associates expertise in the periodic processing requirements and financial management systems provided the Federal client with the following solutions:

Starry Associates identified this as an opportunity to assist the government in providing solutions for these issues. Starry Associates designed and developed a web-based solution so that the users could access the reports from their computer. This allowed the users to view the report on their computer screen and then print it to a local or networked printer. Upon identification of the business need, Starry Associates developed a small prototype system and presented potential options in a working environment to major decision makers and their business user groups. From 'go forward' point of demonstration, we then developed a full requirements analysis, proposal/project plan, and secured required funding and authorization. Starry Associates developed the system, which became a full report repository. Gov.net© contains substantial security measures to ensure that each user gains access to only a portion of the data that they are given authorization to view. Starry Associates trained the users and instructed the trainers so that they can continue to perform the training for new users.

A large U.S. Government service support center was faced with a critical issue to convert all data from a legacy accounting system, including associated programs, interfaces, feeder systems, and processes that generated the data at a departmental level with 100% accuracy and complete reconciliation.This would be one of the largest Federal financial system conversions in this country.

The solution involved utilizing the skills and experience of Starry Associates staff as well as the experience of the Federal financial employees.

The conversion of the Federal financial legacy system, and its associated interfaces and ancillary feeder systems, was completed on time and significantly under projected budget. The 99.99% accuracy of reconciled values and 100% of data integrity goals were met. It was noted that this was the first time in the U.S. Government service support center group's history that such accuracy and integrity had ever been accomplished.

The same United States Federal organization was later challenged with the need to expand Gov.net® as a service support center to accomplish the following requirements as they moved from the legacy accounting system to an Oracle Federal Financials implementation:

• Maintain a repository of the legacy accounting system reports for historical purposes
• Reporting archive solution for additional feeder systems as access to the mainframe was being shutdown
• Provide a report repository for the Oracle Federal Financial reports to maintain the periodic reports and distribute to the user community
• A web based application that would allow the user to print their reports to a local or networked printer
• Establish a data archive to house the legacy financial system as access to the mainframe was being shutdown
• The ability to limit the user's access to the master data repository allowing the user only data that was required to do their job

Starry Associates identified this as an opportunity to expand the Gov.net® solution to the next generation, GovNet-NG® a complete data and report repository. Starry Associates extended the web-based solution architecture so that the users could access the reports from various systems and the legacy data archives from their computer. Starry Associates developed the GovNet-NG® system, which became a full data repository including data warehouse and report archives. GovNet-NG® maintains the substantial security measures to ensure that each user gains access to only a portion of the data that they are given authorization to view, which was now upgraded to the Oracle Federal Financials user identifications. Starry Associates provided additional training for the users and instructed the trainers so they can continue to perform the training for new users.

Benefit: GovNet-NG® now provides the Federal service support center with the following capabilities:

• Supports the data archive from the legacy system (14 years of documents, approximately 18 million archived documents)
• Web based application
• Saved the government agency over 19 million dollars from inception to implementation (amount determined by prices provided for the same report and data warehouse)
• Delivered within 1 year as a full production system (other implementations of the same functionality was estimated at three plus years)
• System expanded by 66% - transparent to user organizations
• Expanded to support production reporting needs
• Production system resources not required for multiple executions of the canned report cycles reporting

All Federal government agencies have been directed by the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic travel solution.

Starry Associates was contracted by a government agency to investigate their legacy travel system and interfaces into the accounting system. From the analysis, Starry Associates then developed and implemented the "Back Office" interfaces into the new e-Travel system. Once the e-Travel System was in a production state, Starry Associates derived a crosswalk process that was applied to the financial management system. This allowed for the transparent conversion of data, and an immediate "go-live" support of the e-Travel system upon completion of the financial management system conversion. In addition, Starry Associates completed the project ahead of schedule, including program changes and testing, and held to a quality process of 100% reconciliation of the values within the system. In addition, Starry Associates passed all of the audit and process reviews (SAS70 and OMB's A-123) requirements.

Starry Associates was able to assist the Federal service support center in successfully bringing the Agency's systems into production on time (completed within 5 month timeline) and within budget. In addition, the Agency was brought up with no errors, transparent to the end users of the system,and was fully reconciled, which met the required deliverables of the project plan. Starry Associates was able to support our client so that they met their commitment to supporting the Agency. This also will improve the Federal service support center's ability to incorporate additional clients in building out their accounting system as a Centers of Excellence. Since then, this conversion has passed all audit requirements.