Hear Our Customer Speak - Department for Transport , UK

The department needed to replace its crucial interface between the high level Treasury COINS System and its own internal lower level budget and transaction systems. Information Edge stepped in to provide these requirements with CASSy (Coins Advanced Solution System), which also catered to the corporate budgeting, data management, reporting and consolidation functions of DfT. The following interview discusses the current CASSy System implementation taking place at DfT.

We spoke to:
Stephen Reeves - Deputy Director of Finance, Group Management Accounting
Sarah Baskerville - Team Leader, Financial Integrated Systems Team, CASSY Project Manager
Allison Perkins - Assistant Project Manager

1. How have you found working with Information Edge?

The way in which the two organisations work together is in partnership, an approach which has in part led to a recent OGC health check assessment, the assessment highlighted the CASSy project as a well run project with excellent commitment from both of the DfT and Information Edge teams. Overall, it is good to work with an organisation that understands central government financial management as well as the constraints and pressures within which the department has to operate.

2. What do you expect the benefits of COINS Lite to be for DfT?

We have already simplified and streamlined our month-end process; COINS Lite allows the department to take a significant step forward and gives additional functionality not previously available. We were fortunate to have had previously the ICARUS system (our current Master Data Management/Consolidation system) but COINS Lite offers much more than this – with Information Edge being the incumbent suppliers of the COINS system to HM Treasury COINS Lite is in turn much closer to the overall COINS system.

The additional benefits that this will offer us will be stronger links to COINS, a smoother transition of data, automation of a previously heavy manual process, free COINS enhancements so no extra cost to the department, etc. Overall decision making will improve thanks to more accurate and timely data / information.

Our short-term vision is to be able to do the basics more efficiently, reconcile the numbers accurately and ultimately satisfy the DfT Board, our Executive Committee and HM Treasury. On the whole, the business may not notice a huge difference but Corporate Finance will. The longer-term vision is to establish central finance as a more effective partner within theDepartment, strengthening the Group Corporate role across the entire DfT Family, as well as to meet the demands of Performance / DSO reporting something which COINS Lite has the capability to support in the future).

We recognise the need to make use of technology to manage the Department more effectively; this is particularly the case with initiatives such as delivering the Transport agenda with finite resources, the new task of consolidating the accounts across the DfT family and also maintaining stability during the transitional period of rolling out Shared Services (based in the DVLA in Swansea) to the core Department.

We also believe that an additional benefit is the chance to improve the internal skills and capabilities of central finance staff – the CASSy project team have to take a proactive role in administering the system architecture, an offshoot of this should be more relevant, up-to-date skills. Although these skills may not be recognised as Professional Skills for Government (PSG) they do complement and fall along side PSG e.g. increased system qualifications and financial experience, deeper understanding of how a system works, better knowledge on how to produce reports, and a greater understanding of the wider strategic view of the organisation.

3. Do you think other departments could realise these benefits too?

There is definitely the potential for a number of other government departments to realise the same benefits of COINS Lite – the benefits realisation will depend upon where they are down the track, with their own internal processes for managing financial data, consolidating, corporate master data management and corporate reporting.

A lot of the larger departments could realise the same benefits as there is always room for continuous improvement, they are generally subject to the same challenges as we are e.g. the consolidation challenge of pulling data/information from a number of sponsored bodies and the management and reporting of that information. However, for the benefits to be realised a cultural change has to take place as well as a change in departments’ current processes. DfT has been through a lot of Machinery of Government (MoG) changes from DETR, to DTLR, to DfT & ODPM (now DCLG) within a very relatively short time span, at the same time implementing a new accounting system – this forced DfT to adapt and streamline processes quickly to meet the challenges of financial reporting.

Saying that, it did take time to bed down, cultural change doesn’t happen over night, and DfT invested a lot of time, resource and effort in working through the challenges. Moving to DfT Shared Services will present a different set of challenges that we will rise to with the aid of CASSy. Not every large department has had to go through the level of MoG changes that DfT has experienced over the last 6 years.

4. What major challenges do you see for finance teams over the next three years?

For DfT one of the major challenges is embedding our new shared services environment and ensuring staff are fully trained on the new system. We, like all other departments need to continue to provide efficiency savings. We also need to improve our general working environment and create a better place to work. This goes hand-in-hand with improving the capability of the department.

We as a department need to ensure we have the right balance of retaining the best trained staff whilst maintaining healthy staff refreshment levels. More generally we need to ensure we are continually getting value for money spent on programmes especially as industry costs are increasing (effecting programmes such as Cross Rail, the Olympics, Road Programmes, etc). Costs continue to rise so too does demand but resources are constantly getting smaller. The changing reporting demands from HM Treasury also pose future challenges e.g. Clear Line of Sight, CSR, and performance management reporting.

A lot of Departments (including ourselves) need to rise to the challenge of reporting against Departmental Strategic Objects, Targets and KPI’s. At the moment, we are focusing on bedding down Shared Services,but we will have to turn our attention to Performance Management reporting, and develop strategies,policies, and systems on how we will do this.Essentially any changes made by HM Treasury whether it is COINS or Policy orientated can have a huge knock-on effect on Departments, and their ability to report in the new/revised regimes.

5. What extra information do departments and senior managers need to have in order to make more informed decisions? (E.g. more about risks, people, priorities, outputs, outcomes, policy, delivery?)

Bringing finance and planning closer together. More and more we need to pull these two strands together, bringing in information on risks/liabilities as part of our standard reporting to Senior Management. ssentially, a management information strategy to further support our Board/Executive committee in risk/evidenced based decision making.

6. What is the ultimate, overall benefit realisation(s) expected?

Overall, it is to have shared services bedded in, month-end reporting happening seamlessly, and consolidation sorted. In essence the vision is that everything will take care of itself in terms of giving better decision making – one version of the truth that nobody questions. Underpinning everything will be value for money.
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