Transforming to decision support: ready, set, go--Air Force financial transformation.

The Department of Defense (DoD) continues to transform the way it prepares for and fights our nation's battles. All DoD entities that support the warfighter have been asked to transform--to become more efficient, to better use scarce resources, and to provide improved support for those who put themselves in harm's way to defend freedom and the American way of life.

The Air Force financial management community has taken seriously the challenge to transform. We realized that transformation gave us the opportunity to mold and shape what our community would look like for years to come. We saw the opportunity to drive financial management transformation, and we proactively stepped up to the challenge.

Some may not think that we are in the driver's seat, but the reality is that lots of people across all the major commands (MAJCOMs) and many of the bases are involved in answering the question "How we are going to transform ...?"

The first couple years of our transformation effort were a building period--building vision and strategy. In February 2005, we entered the operational phase of transformation--when we started putting plans into action. Now we have six lanes of financial transformation, all up and running and led by Mr. Roger Bick, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Financial Management and Comptroller) (SAF/FMT).

The actual lane names may be viewed on the SAF/FMT web site available on the Air Force Portal (www.saffm.hq.af.mil). More important than the names, however, is what anchors those six lanes: decision support. The financial management community of the future is--and must be--about providing decision support to senior leaders.

So, what exactly is decision support?

Decision support is about the processes, methods, tools, and communication techniques used to evaluate financial transactions and to provide analyses of why things happened. This is essential so that impacts and projections can be developed and presented to senior leaders other than those with a financial management background in an easily comprehendible and actionable manner. It is about providing the decision maker with viable alternatives, financial and nonfinancial impacts of choosing an alternative, making a solid recommendation, and implementing the boss's recommendation in an efficient manner.

To make the move to decision support, we realized that we must use technology to facilitate the important role of financial scorekeeping--keeping track of what happened. This allows us to free up valuable staff hours so that more of us can perform value-added analysis and recommend alternative courses of action, understanding that there still will be some transactional activity that must be performed.

An example of this can be found in the Financial Services Transformation (FST) lane, which addresses how we will carry out pay and travel in the future. The FST team is about 20 members strong, with representation from all of the MAJCOMs. The team currently is staffing a proposed post-Service Delivery Model base-level organizational structure with the MAJCOMs. The goal is to use the proposed structure as supporting documentation in the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Program Objective Memorandum, where the money and manning are addressed for future execution.

The future structure includes a central processing center and a call center. The centralized process allows for maximum gains in efficiency as technology is used to crank through the myriad transactions and to provide near instantaneous answers for the technicians who receive questions at the call center. Although we continue to work through the specifics, we envision that the centralized pay and travel center will be operational by October 2007. Once it is operational, we will be one step closer to providing decision support.

Decision support requires that we develop financial advisor positions and embed them in select groups and squadrons so that the incumbents of those positions are available to provide alternatives and recommendations to the decision makers. The Financial Advisor Team working this issue is driven by a "5R" approach, made up of the following stages: realign, reskill, retool, reassess, and revector.

* The first step will require the Accounting Liaison Offices (ALO) to realign with the Financial Analysis (FMA) flight and form new Financial Advisor teams centered on financial management customers.

* This will position the Financial Advisor Team to reskill the workforce, focusing on strategic and analytical skills and reeducating financial management's customers on the strategic and analytical decision support work that the financial advisors will perform.

* Retooling is the next step in the process as new accounting systems and budget systems come on line. These systems will reduce manual transaction processing, thereby freeing up staff time for decision support and analysis.

* After the retooling stage, the Financial Advisor Team will reassess the project to make sure that it is in line with objectives and will validate that the systems have significantly reduced manual workloads.

* Once it is determined that the process is on track, the Financial Advisor Team will revector some ALO-FMA staff in order to embed financial advisors within groups and squadrons to provide enhanced decision support to commanders and the greater Air Force. This is the roadmap for providing future financial management support to the Air Force.

To promote the 5R transition, a Center of Expertise (COE) will be activated early next year, thereby facilitating a return of the "lost art" of cost analysis. The COE will provide surge support to installations on an as-needed basis when the resident capability is taxed to the limit. Once the COE is established, we encourage Air Force Financial Management personnel to call upon the COE for help in working through the transformational efforts required to provide decision support.

Transformation efforts also have included the formation of a Combat Comptroller Team to consolidate deployment information to one site and enhance the training capability. The team recently developed and won approval for a new electronic funds transfer process that includes connectivity with the Department of the Treasury and reduces the need for limited depository accounts. The team also is streamlining the contracting and payment process with a prototype portable purchase order (Standard Form 44) tool.

The Budget Transformation Operation lane is focusing on processes and systems improvements currently resident at Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon. The results of these efforts will improve how MAJCOMs and bases interact across various processes with higher headquarters.

Finally, we are transforming education, training, and development by creating a world-class management framework centered on decision support. The Education & Training Team has already built 53 Web-based budget training guides to facilitate the FMA/ALO realignment. A Center of Expertise induction course is under works. And the Defense Financial Management and Comptroller School (DFM&CS) at Maxwell Air Force Base has developed a new four-week Defense Financial Management Course (DFMC) with a joint focus on decision support, leadership, operating in the strategic environment, and core financial management processes like planning, programming, budgeting and execution; budget prioritization; and fiscal law.

The DFM&CS has also developed a five-day Senior Decision Support Workshop, which will focus on educating the joint financial management community on how most effectively to use the ideas in the six lanes of transformation to provide decision support. The first Senior Decision Support Workshop is scheduled to be piloted for April 2006.

In summary, the entire process of transformation focuses on linking people, processes, and systems within a rapidly changing environment. To help manage that change and to answer the question "What does this mean to me?" we've established a Career Plan Development Team, led by Ms. Glenda Scheiner, SAF/ FMPW and Mr. Dave Weinberg, SAF/FMT. This team includes representation by officer, enlisted, civilian, war-planning, acquisition, base, MAJCOM, Air Staff, and FM squadron commander personnel. The team is working to specify the future career path for each group and to answer the unknowns that currently exist as we transform the Air Force financial management community to provide better decision support to senior leaders.

Dave Weinberg is an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, working in SAF/FM Transformation. He is a Level III Financial Manager, a CDFM, and a member of the Washington Chapter

Major Brian Kehl, PhD, is Chief, Strategic Environment and Transformation, at the Defense Financial Management & Comptroller School, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.