5 'concerns' that could slow DOJ's DATA Act implementation

A new inspector general’s report has found that while the Justice Department is on track to meet the reporting requirements laid out in the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, there are still multiple concerns about the agency’s ability to extract data ahead of implementation.

The DATA Act requires that federal agencies standardize their spending information by May 2017 to promote greater transparency and the use of analytics.

Related: Read the report.

The report sought to assess the DOJ’s ability to meet the 2017 deadline for DATA Act reporting. The inspector general said that, based on research, the agency’s execution plan was sufficient to report standardized data by May, but also identified five hurdles that could hinder the DATA Act implementation’s momentum.
The inspector general’s “concerns” center largely on requiring impact analysis of the new data reporting requirements, accounting and data extraction from some of the agency’s specific systems.

The report noted that to ensure the DATA Act transition implementation moves smoothly, the DOJ should take the following steps:

Complete a full inventory, mapping and gap analysis of the agency

The report noted that the DOJ had initially done initial inventory analysis of both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Office of Justice Programs under its three financial systems in fiscal 2015, but had yet to do such an analysis department-wide.

“The Department planned to leverage the knowledge gained in mapping the two major financial systems at DEA and OJP for mapping the remainder of the Department’s components, because the mappings of DEA and OJP were believed to be representative of all users for those respective financial systems,” the report said.

“However, the Department did not fully foresee the issues that would arise due to the different components’ configurations of the financial systems and the inconsistencies in the way that components capture and report financial data.”

The report said that DOJ had delayed the full inventory while the Treasury Department applied changes to its data broker, the DATA Act Information Model Schema, but that rollout was delayed. As of Aug. 31, the report said that DOJ had yet to do a full inventory analysis.

Develop a complete solution for standardized data extraction

The report noted that the DOJ had submitted small component agency data to DAIMS for testing, but had yet to develop a solution for broader data extraction.

“The test data was taken from the financial system and manually reconfigured to be consistent with the reporting requirements,” the report said. “This was possible for the Department to accomplish with a small component; however, manual reconfiguration of the data for all components could be risky.”
The DOJ said it has a plan to develop a solution in January 2017, with testing completed by March 2017, but the OIG said the timeline leaves little room for delays or setbacks, leading to concerns that it could impact the May deadline.

Link procurement data to the FMIS2 and SAP financial systems

The report found that DOJ procurement data from its Procurement Instrument Identifier system was not captured by two of its three financial systems — the Financial Management Information System 2 or the Systems, Applications and Products system.

The OIG said that DOJ officials plan to capture PIID data manually, but had yet to develop a solution to do so. The inspector general also expressed concerns that manually processing that amount of data would be “time-consuming and inefficient, and would also have an inherent high risk for errors.”

Conduct an impact analysis of Federal Prison Industries

Because FPI is a government corporation that uses a commercial accounting system that is proprietary, it doesn’t record budgetary accounting at the transactional level, creating a data gap that has to be corrected for DATA Act reporting.

The OIG said that the department should conduct an impact analysis to determine how to convert FPI’s accounting information into a format that meets the DATA Act requirements.

Develop a Direct/Reimbursable Funding Source Indicator for FMIS2

The DOJ’s legacy accounting system doesn’t currently have a way to capture data for direct or refundable data sources in FMIS2, which could cause a data reporting gap, the report said.

Because the department plans to retire the system in 2020, it told the OIG it hadn’t planned on installing such an indicator following a cost-benefit analysis of such a move.
However, investigators noted that Direct/Reimbursable funding sources are a required dataset of the DATA Act and that having no such indicator could make reporting data incomplete.

In response to the report, the DOJ said that is already working to address the concerns laid out by the OIG.

Federal agencies must begin their DATA Act reporting by May 9, 2017.