U.S. Department of State Fiscal Year 2020 Agency Financial Report

Department also implemented the Local Travel module allowing for the submission of local travel claims for expenses incurred in and around the vicinity of a duty station. The Department expanded the use of the Local Travel feature to also accommodate non-travel employee claims previously submitted through an OF-1164. In the Local Travel module, approvers will electronically approve claims and provide reimbursement to the employee’s bank account via EFT. The Department has completed this implementation for 180 posts overseas. The Department continues to work with our bureaus and posts to identify improvements that can be made to the travel system. The Department also participates with other agencies to prioritize travel system enhancements across the Federal Government landscape. The Department worked with Carlson Wagonlit Travel to enhance the functionality for reservation retrievals within amendments to reflect updated ticket costs more accurately without manual manipulation. The Department continues to work with Carlson Wagonlit Travel on enhancements to support integration improvements with our financial systems. The Department also continues to work with Carlson Wagonlit Travel on enhancements to support the implementation of split disbursements for direct payments of individually billed account charges, the Local Payments module domestically, and initiated work to implement an integrated reporting solution to identify cost savings associated with travel. C ompensation S ystems P rogram The Department serves as one of five payroll shared service providers on behalf of Federal agencies. Shared service providers process payroll annually for some 2.3 million employees worldwide, or about 99 percent of the Federal civilian workforce. The Department continued to execute a phased deployment strategy, replacing six legacy payroll systems with a single, COTS-based solution to address the widely diverse payroll requirements of the Foreign Service, Civil Service, LE staff, and retirees of the Department and the other 45 civilian agencies serviced. The “Compensation System Vision and Concept” diagram highlights how past and future changes involve simplifying and consolidating budgetary data has been made available within the Global BI reporting platform to support an expanded planned versus actual and other budgetary reporting previously unavailable to the agency in a central location. In 2020, the BSM project also completed three of the six major milestones of the IBIS overseas initiative, which when completed, will produce a unified budgeting system, encompassing domestic and overseas budgeting processes. The first milestone introduced regional bureau capabilities to communicate and report budget targets with posts as well as standardize the post target reports. The second IBIS overseas milestone introduced a layered global security platform to allow for all posts, overseas organization support divisions, and domestic users to utilize one centralized system. The third milestone completed in 2020 allows for submission and approval of unfunded priority requests, and other data calls by posts to regional bureaus. The latter functionality was introduced into the platform late in the fiscal year and will be rolled out to the user community in 2021. In 2021, the BSM project will work towards completing the final three milestones of the IBIS overseas rollout as well as incorporating other budgetary functionality from existing legacy systems such as Web Resource Allocation and Budget Integration Tool (WebRABIT). WebRABIT is an application used by regional and some functional bureaus for tracking modifications of execution year budgets to their posts. WebRABIT is currently in an operations and maintenance mode, with resources being aligned at a lower level of activity. The BSM project is part of the long-term strategy to provide a unified budgetary Department-wide solution for the Department. Web International Cooperative Administrative Support Services (WebICASS) is the principal means by which the U.S. Government shares the cost of common administrative support at its more than 270 diplomatic and consular posts overseas. The Department has statutory authority to serve as the primary overseas shared service provider to other agencies. T ravel S ystems P rogram In 2016, the Department successfully transitioned to the next generation of the E-Government Travel Services (ETS2) contract with Carlson Wagonlit Travel. In 2016, the 2020 A gency F inanci al R eport U ni ted S tates D epartment of S tate | 149 RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS SUMMARY | OTHER INFORMATION