BTA Enterprise Integration Director Prashant Gaur on Implementing Business and Financial Systems Across DoD
Communications Division
Business Transformation Agency
December 23, 2008
EI Director Prashant Gaur
Arlington, Va. – Business Transformation Agency's (BTA's) Enterprise Integration (EI) Director Prashant Gaur spoke on the topic of "Business Transition and Implementation of Financial Systems Across DoD" at the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) Annual Mid-Atlantic Professional Development Conference. AGA Virginia Peninsula and Richmond Chapters hosted the conference with a theme of Financial Management in a Time of Economic Change in Williamsburg, Va., on December 5.
Gaur spoke about the performance of the services' financial systems, outlined lessons learned and proposed a path forward.
"The Department is investing heavily in financial and business systems across the Navy, Army and Air Force to achieve financial and logistics visibility," said Gaur. "BTA works across the services on their implementation."
The conference addressed challenges faced by public sector financial professionals which exceed simply posting transactions, preparing financial reports or auditing them. Gaur underscored the importance of addressing key enablers.
"The issues of paramount importance for successfully implementing systems in DoD include governance, domain integration and audit readiness across accounting, acquisition and logistics," said Gaur. "We need to develop the relevant Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness policy and correctly apply requirements such as the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act."
Other speakers also addressed topics of relevance to local, state and federal entities such as improving business processes and examining internal controls in a rapidly changing government business environment and tying budgets to performance, reporting intergovernmental financial dependency and related risk, and enterprise resource planning.
More than 170 representatives from federal agencies and local governments, academia and the private sector attended the conference. Participants shared best practices, networked with peers and learned from government accountability subject-matter experts. Attendees included accountants, auditors, financial and performance executives, budget analysts and information systems managers.