WEBVTT

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(upbeat music)

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- So in 2004, which was 15 years ago

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DFAS declared the accounts
payable material weakness.

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And why this was so significant
is a material weakness

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is the most severe of the deficiencies

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where it actually says
that you could potentially

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have a misstatement on
your financial statements.

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(upbeat music)

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Our portion of that now is
down to control deficiency.

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So we are paving the way,
we're leading the way

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for the department defense.

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And the reason that DFAS is so successful

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and this is that there's
still a Department of Defense

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accounts payable and material weakness.

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So the department as a
whole still has declared

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a material weakness.

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(upbeat music)

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- It's a problem because
of the nature of our work

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in developing financial statements

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is to report accurate balances.

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We're talking hundreds of
thousands of transactions a year

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from multiple systems.

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- We did not have the ability to support

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our accounts payable balances
on the financial statements.

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- Accounts payable has been
particularly challenging for us

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because the department
has many different systems

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that generate entitlement
and payables information.

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They're not integrated in many cases,

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with the general ledger that creates

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the financial statements.

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We identified seven or eight
systems that did not interface

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with GAFS-R or DEAMS that
we needed to pull data,

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the different systems interface
into our financial reports.

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Once we knew the systems
and the data sources,

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creating the retrievals
that would allow us

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to do a quantity drill down.

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- From their financial statements
drilling all the way down

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to their individual GLACs

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for their accounts payable balances.

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- Part of the balances on
the financial statements,

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I don't know that we have
any greater influence

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on the statements, than the
transactions that we process

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with expenditures,
payables and receivables.

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(upbeat music)

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- When we did the
material weakness in 2004,

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we started implementing
different milestones

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and different things that
we wanted to do as an agency

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to try to downgrade the first facts

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of that material weakness.

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- This really created the
roadmap and the tactical approach

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to accounts payable success.

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- So we established six
different high-risk milestones

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that we wanted to achieve
across the different site

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for Colombia specifically,
they were very much the lead

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for the Air Force portion of this,

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for the Marine Corp portion,
for portions of the army.

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- This was not a one person effort

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and then we've got a
strong Colombia's team

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that I work with.

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They have a pretty good
lean forward attitude

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and they don't have to
know the exact solution,

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they just need to know
solutions suspected.

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And then they experiment and
they do some magical things.

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- They were one of the sites
that brought to the table,

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a lot of the solutions,
a lot of the ideas,

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a lot of the brainstorming,
they had different analysts

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that were able to dig into these
numbers and understand them

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in a way that really shed
light on some of the issues

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that we're facing and
how we can potentially

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solve those issues.

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- Discussing and strategizing
are our solutions.

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- So we're hoping our customers can learn

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from what we're doing and maybe use

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some of those in their concepts
and use some of our ideas

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for their solutions.

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- The framework we build
became somewhat foundational

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for what many of the sites have now done,

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so very proud of the team
that had that can do attitude

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and some of the analytic
skills to just create

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what we call then waterfall charts.

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- We know we still have work to do,

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we're seeing that from our audits,

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but a lot of the NFRs that are coming

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are I would say, low risk, low impact,

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because we have worked so
hard to get to this point.

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And we have, you know, that
cross site, common goal in mind

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where everyone's driving
towards the same solution,

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where we can say, okay,
we're able to state

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our financial statements accurately.

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To be able to go from a material
weakness to 15 years later

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to a control deficiency on
something as big and as in depth

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and as complicated as an
accounts payable balance

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on the Department of Defense,
financial statements,

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that's a huge achievement.

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- We have made huge
improvements in the credibility

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and the dependability
of payables balances.

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(upbeat music)