Shortages . In. If i heard i think there are many questions embedded in there. Lets take one at a time. We put in place a policy to allow safe, nutritious formula to come into the country to make sure parents could find product on store shelves during the period of the national shortage. We had certain labelling requirements and they are primarily for things like safety. For example, a baby that has a cows milk aller by the were leaving this here you can watch it in its entirety if you go to our website. Live now to capitol hill where Veterans AffairsDepartment Officials will testify in their efforts to upgrade technology and improve Financial Management at the v. A. Live coverage here on c span. Good afternoon, the subcommittee will come to order. Were here today to review the vas progress in the transformational Business Program or fmbt. Its the vas third attempt to modernize the aging inadd watt financial and accounting systems. Material witnesses and deficiencies for decades. At the same time, the departments continues to be much similar to the wild west. Its been nearly ten years since the former va senior procurement executive blew the whistle for billions of dollars of unauthorized commitments. And nothing is fundamentally changing. With so many purchased cards and so many different facilities and no central tracking, the department is practically helpless to enforce its policies, much less root out waste and fraud. Basic function stretched the capabilities of the system, like maintaining records when the va transferred the cares and arp funds. When the committee asked basic questions about how the funding was handled during last months hearing, the va witnesses struggled to answer. Additionally, one witness showed contempt to members for even trying to perform our basic oversight duties. This situation is untenable and i appreciate that our Witnesses Today are attempting to solve it. Simply put, the fm bt program has to succeed. After a full start in 2016 and 2017, va relaunch the effort in 2018. Since then, the integrated financial and Acquisition Management systems have been implemented in the National Cemetery administration within the benefits administration, the office of information and technology, the office of the Inspector General, and part of the artifice of acquisition, lead just six, and construction. From the information we have, the system seems to be relatively successful in those offices. But theres still reason to be concerned. These organizations only add up to a few thousand users, and a small fraction of the vas budget. Implementing the eye phams and major organizations like the Veterans Health organization and the big spenders within the Veterans Benefits administration keeps getting pushed out and now is not scheduled for a rule out until 2024 and beyond. Meanwhile, the implementation costs continue to rise. Im not suggesting we have another ehrm here on our hands, and let me be clear, i believe most of the promises of the fmbt are sound, but this seems to be suffering from familiar problems like poor correlation between the various organizations within the va, struggles to fit commercial software, and extremely long schedules. Its been 3. 5 years since the fmct program. I think veterans and taxpayers are overdue for an update. I appreciate the witnesses with us today to help understand the challenges we face. I look forward to working deliver this system successfully. With that, i would yield Opening Statement time to Ranking Member sheila cherfilusmccormick. Thank, you mister chairman. First, i would like to say that im happy that we are having this hearing on and i. T. Modernization program that is so important to the future of va. As Inspector General has reported, the use of the aging Financial Management system has led to manual workarounds, which impedes vas and congresss ability to conduct oversight and spending. Va is the second Largest Federal Agency and relies on i. T. Infrastructure that is decades old. While we are all wear of the failures in Health Care Supply chain modernization, this program has largely gone unnoticed. This is a good thing. When the i. T. Program goes well, we usually dont hear about them. Unfortunately, this program is now experiencing delays. Given the importance of this program, this committee needs to understand the underlying issues. This program is foundational to creating not only financial efficiency for the department, but for accountability and oversight of congress. I hope to hear from our witnesses from va and the cgi federal today an honest account of how we can ensure the successful and Timely Development of ifams. I wont belabor the point i made every hearing weve had at the subcommittee this congress. Va obviously doesnt have the management infrastructure in place to coordinate and ensure the success of these large 18 modernization efforts. There are bills that have cosponsors that would at the very least start moving them in the right direction. I hope that we can start acting on these soon, here in the house. I demonetization is mandatory, not optional. It is in everyones interest to finally do this in a way that does not upset veterans and employees, and wastes billions of dollars. Commitment to management and standardization of processes across the department is essential to our future success. Thank you again, chairman. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses this morning. Thank you, Ranking Member. I will now introduce the witnesses on the first panel. I, the department of Veterans Affairs, we have miss teresa riffle, the Deputy Assistant secretary for Financial Management business transformation. We have mr. Charles tap, the chief Financial Officer for the Veterans Benefits administration, and mr. Daniel mcewen, deputy chief Information Officer for Software Product management at the office of information and technology. Next we have mr. Sydney gets, Senior Vice President for cgi federal. And finally, we have mr. Nic dahl, Deputy AssistantInspector General for audits and evaluations at the office of Inspector General for the department of Veterans Affairs. If you would please rise and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear on penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to provide us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . Thank you. Let the record reflect that all witnesses have answered in the affirmative. Miss ripple, you are now recognized for five minutes to deliver your Opening Statement. Good afternoon, chairman rosendale, and all members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and support of the department of Veterans Affairs, Financial Management, Business Transformation Program and its implementation of integrated financial and Acquisition Management systems. Im a come by daniel machine Software Product management in Veterans Benefits administration va cannot continue to rely on its legacy Financial Management system due to the enormous risk it presents to va operations. Its become increasingly difficult to support from a technical and functional abilities standpoint we cannot todays internal control standards. I am proud to report that ifams is no longer proof of concept, its successfully replacing the 19 80s era Financial Management system. Its been successfully up and running at va from almost three years, completing six successful deployments of ifams encompassing 4700 users across the enterprise. That includes the entirety of the National Cemetery administration, a portion of and several major staff offices. This includes the office of information and technology, the officer of the Inspector General. Ifams users have collectively processed over 4. 5 million transactions, representing almost ten billion in treasury disbursements. Ifams is stable, achieving over 99. 9 up time. On june 12th, 2023, va went live with its largest deployment to date, increasing the current user base by 60 . It was also the first time be a wet lifestyle train easily with both the finance and a physician components of ifams, which demonstrates that it is a viable solution capable of becoming the next generation financial and acquisition solution for va. Its important understand that ifams is not just a core accounting and acquisition system, it is crucial to transforming vas business processes and capabilities, so we can meet our goals and objectives, the complied with Financial Management legislation, and continue to successfully execute our mission to provide veterans with the health care and benefits they have earned and deserve. With so much at stake, both in terms of taxpayer dollars and the departments ability to serve veterans, it is vital that va accurately track and report how funds are used. Fortunately, ifams significantly improves Fund Tracking capabilities, which among other benefits, and shorts proper tracking expenditures. Through the use of ifams, va is increasing the transparency and accuracy of financial information. Va is gaining enhanced planning analysis and decisionmaking capabilities because of improved data integrity, reporting functionality, and business intelligence. Va is demonstrating these achievements through a range of metrics and associate targets based on industry best practices. Ifams process ninjas are part of the strategy to resolve longstanding Material Weaknesses and strengthen internal controls. For example, in contrast to our Current System, which cannot capture cringe action approvals, ifams routes documents to officials and allows supporting documentation to be attached directly to the transaction. Additionally, ifams requires additional levels of approval for high dollar transactions. Ifams also eliminates the need for an external tool to adjust injuries for Financial Reporting. Perhaps most importantly, ifams complies with reporting requirements from the office of management and budget, the department of the treasury, to capture various attributes and conform to the u. S. Standard general ledger. The ace Current System is unable to meet those requirements, which has led to extensive and inefficient manual workarounds and ifams will remediate all of these. Our success has been and continues to be built on partnerships. Mutual respect and to a collaboration with our users. Accordingly, ifams established a dedicated chief experience officer to coordinate user interaction and change management activities. East fmbt changed Management Practices placing heavy emphasis on continuous improvement, using Customer Feedback as and our own observations, findings, and industry best practices, establishing Lessons Learned during each way and incorporate those lessons into subsequent wave employments. Fmbt continues to stand budget despite changes. Our successes would not be possible without the ongoing support of congress, and we appreciate the opportunity today to discuss this important initiative. We will continue to work judiciously with veterans foremost in mind to modernize vas financial and Acquisition Management system and provide you with updates as we make further progress. Although we are encouraged by our success today, we are continually focused on the difficult work lying ahead, and are steadfast in our development through its successful conclusion. Chairman rosendale, Ranking Member sheila cherfilusmccormick, and some committee members, this includes my Opening Statement, i would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. The written statement of will Teresa Riffel be added into the hearing record. Mr. Getz, you are recognized for five minutes. German rosendale, Ranking Member cherfilusmccormick, and other distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My name is syd getz, Senior Vice President at cgi federal. For the last five years, ive served as the project manager on c. J. Federals contract with the va, with the Business Transformation Program known as fmbt. Had the subcommittees invitation, i am here to provide the required so underscore c. J. Federals ongoing commitment to the success of the vas fmbt program. In 2016, the va established the fmbt program to Core Management system, fms. In compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. To accomplish this complex modernization effort, the va selected cgi federal to deploy its momentum enterprise Resource Planning solution. Momentum, known ifams, is an omb improved Financial Management system that is operational at many federal government agencies. To mitigate program risk. The fmbt program is migrating users from the legacy system to ifams using an incremental deployment approach. Each deployment, or wave, delivers specifically could figured i fans capabilities to a defined set of the vas organization using an agile based implementation methodology. Today it, the fmbt program has completed six waves, deploying ifams to 4700 users at 20 different va offices. While there are still milestones and challenges ahead to be sure, ifams is delivering benefits to the user communities. These benefits include improved strategic and daily decisionmaking, processed automation, compliance with federal accounting regulations, maintaining clean audits, new regulatory requirements. A prime example of how its helping the va User Community is the power of its realtime Transaction Processing and on demand reporting. Today, can easily generate Standard Financial acquisitions and drill down into current accurate data on demand. This is because when transactions are entered in ifams, they are first verified to meet v. A. Standards. Then automatically update budgets in the general ledger in realtime. Ifams users also have the capability to refresh reports hourly, rather than daily. And, can run most reports at the enterprise level, administration level, or lower levels of the va administration. Before ifams, some similar reports took days to produce through a manual resource intensive spreadsheetbased process. As with other complex programs, success often depends on the stick holds focus on Key Performance factors. The same holds true here, are the teams focused on collaboration, transparency, enterprise wide standardization, continuous improvement, diligent change management, and execution of its risk based has kept the program moving forward. To illustrate this point, let me share how the team is maximized the value of formal user acceptance testing, also known as you a tea. In the first few waves, users performed hands on you a t towards the end of each wave. This is a common and standard approach. Lessons learned showed us weve improved user adoption by using the performative hands on functionality of ifams much earlier in each wave. So we refined the Program Implementation methodology, and applied this approach to the most recent place. By helping users gain and earlier appreciation of ifams, the team gained useful feedback in change management in training. It also has allowed us to identify and resolve issues earlier. Saving time and resources. I end this testimony where i began, by reiterating sea g. I. S federals unwavering commitment to collaborating with the fm beaty program, to deliver ifams to the entire v. A. User base for the benefit of our veterans. The written statement of mr. Getz will be entered into the written record. Mr. Dolly are now recognized for five minutes to deliver your Opening Statement. Chairman rosendale, Ranking Member sheila cherfilusmccormick, since 2015 the authors ofs Financial Statements has reported a Material Weakness due to Management Systems full implementation of ifams could