Tackling Updates to Standards
Date: June 29, 2018
Before every new football season starts, the National Football League’s (NFL) players, coaches, and executives review and update the rules of the game.
These rules set the standards for how the game is played, and the updates ensure the safety of players, promote viewership, and clarify questions among officials. The constant review may seem mundane and sometimes pointless, especially if there are no changes, but when it comes to the continuous improvement of the sport, it’s critical.
This year, FIT embarked on the first annual update of the Financial Management Line of Business (FMLoB) Financial Management (FM) Standard References (Federal Financial Management System Requirements (FFMSR), FM Use Cases, FM Functions and Activities List, and FM Data Element Definitions).
These standards were created to help inform federal FM systems and practices. It’s important that they remain “living” to show the changes as new authoritative guidance is released. Although FIT had reviewed these documents, this was the first time using a structured, repeatable process to identify updates and include feedback from the FM community.
Throughout the season, the NFL’s Competition Committee, comprised of a subset of coaches and executives, monitors current issues that may affect the rules. Similarly, between April 2017 and March 2018, FIT tracked new and modified laws, regulations, and guidance and evaluated the potential impacts to the FMLoB standard references.
FIT then gathered the entire league, the Financial Management Standards Committee’s Financial Management Working Group comprised of 23 representative agencies, to review and provide feedback on recommended changes to the Standards.
Just like the Competition Committee at the start of the football season, we need the knowledge from those who use the Standards to inform what changes are needed and what language is best suited across agencies. More than 150 comments were provided on the proposed changes.
In total, 20 functions and activities were revised for more clarity, and the authoritative references were updated for 26 FFMSR ID’s, with no changes to the requirements. The full listing of changes will be published in late July. All references are available on the FIT website.
If you have questions or are interested in getting involved in next year’s annual update, please reach out to fit@fiscal.treasury.gov, and we’ll get you connected.
We look forward to having new players added to our lineup!