AMSG Helps the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Health Agency (DHA) Save $199.6 Million
Tracy Strickland, Andy Rojas and Juania Owens
Each year, the Federal Government does a “sweep” of its financial accounts by taking back any uncommitted funds. However, before any uncommitted funds are “swept”, the Financial Operations Directorate (FOD) gives the Agency a hard cut-off deadline. Customers are then given the opportunity to execute any uncommitted funds in their respective portfolios before it is taken away – “swept” – in accordance with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Financial Policies and Congressional mandated policies.
FOD not only “sweeps” funds, but they control the flow of how much funding is disbursed to each division within the Defense Health Agency (DHA) for the procurement of labor, hardware, and software. On July 5, 2022, the Defense Health Agency’s (DHA) Infrastructure and Services Resource Management Branch (ISRMB) Finance (FIN), and Acquisitions (ACQ) teams were issued a hard deadline to commit all Quarter 4 funds that were loaded on July 8, 2022 by July 15, 2022. This short deadline gave the Agency five days to spend $200 million in Information Technology (IT) Software/Hardware (SW/HW) funding or the money would be swept from the Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Medical Systems/Chief Information Officer (J-6). Since unspent dollars are taken away from Agencies and not given back the following Fiscal Year, the Advanced Management Strategies Group’s (AMSG) team went above and beyond to support the PEO Medical Systems in processing and funding nearly one-hundred actions and about twenty-five Government Purchase Card (GPC) actions.
Teamwork makes the impossible possible. With only five days to get all funding committed to an action, the Acquisitions Team – who is responsible for providing acquisition support to identify, analyze, articulate, and ensure compliance with the acquisition contracting regulations, guidelines, policies, processes, and procedures – began the arduous process. The team worked with the Lifecycle Management Systems Team (LCMS) to ensure they gathered all actions that needed to be processed in the short suspense.
Beyond starting the process and organizing each package, AMSG and the Acquisitions Teams sent all packages to the Finance Team, who worked with the customer’s Resource Manager and Budget Execution Division to ensure all funds were loaded and ready for execution. Working in conjunction with ISRMB, AMSG delivered efficient and the highest quality of support, meeting the July 15th deadline and getting all packages processed, saving the impending swept funding.
Working until midnight on the July 14th and 15th, the Finance Team dedicated their time, effort, and energy to ensuring the deadline was met. By the end, about 99.8% of the intended actions were executed in time, saving the Agency $199.6 million. Although the team put in long hours, coordinating with LCMS, Portfolio & Resource Management Division (PRMD), ISRMB leadership and only having six ISRMB Finance members, we worked seamlessly and as a cohesive team. There were many obstacles but we, AMSG, understood the mission and how our efforts will positively impact our military counterparts in the coming years. The AMSG team went above and beyond to make sure this task was done effectively and efficiently for our customers and showed that we all support and care about the DHA mission.