The Coast Guard has paid more than 25 percent of temporary duty (TDY) backlogged claims in the last week. Additionally, the Travel Assist Team (TAT) will now be available through the remainder of fiscal year 2022 (FY22) to assist with travel claims.
Progress is being made to solve the challenges created by the Financial System Management Solution (FSMS) transition. Additional headway includes:
- Surge staff: Surged 96 personnel to the Coast Guard’s Finance Center (FINCEN) to expedite invoice and member payments.
- Invoice Payments: Trained surged personnel on invoice payment processes. IBM has been updating FSMS vendor banking information to help expedite processing.
- New guidance: A new permanent change of station (PCS) Payment Process Guide provides updated PCS claim processes for FSMS and E-Gov Travel System (ETS). If you have one of the approximately 2,000 PCS claims waiting payment, you need to take an additional step to be paid. We are working with the Pay and Personnel Center (PPC) to notify commands of people who must take action.
- Financial support: Coast Guard Mutual Assistance (CGMA) will give members, civilians, and auxiliarists interest-free loans while they wait for reimbursements. CGMA is also providing grants to cover late fees and interest payments. CGMA can also provide grants to cover interest and late fees.
The Incident Command is diligently working to improve FSMS performance, facilitate the execution of FY22 funding, and improve communications to the workforce, stakeholders, and partners.
“Completing the most significant financial systems transformation in a generation will require patience, commitment, and hard work,” said Rear Adm. Jon Hickey, incident commander. “Bottom line, we are working hard to ensure we pay our people and pay our bills.”
Key accomplishments this week:
- Executed FSMS tax withholding solution and initiated payment of Personally Procured Move (PPM) claims. Anticipate paying 100 PPM claims per day and clearing backlog of 1,300 next month.
- Updated ETS member profiles to reflect workforce changes since October 2021.
- Trained surged personnel on invoice payment process.
- Issued guidance to field to improve FSMS performance and reduce admin burden:
- Purchase Request (PR) Review Process: Issued guidance via “FSMS Fix” to improve PR review process by avoiding PR rejections, reducing re-work/admin burden.
- Antecedent Liability Funding: Released Operations and Support Antecedent Liability Policy and Procedure Update ALCGFINANCE 011/22 enabling access/execution of antecedent liability funding.
- FEDEX: Released Centralization of FEDEX Obligations ALCGFINANCE 010/22 regarding centralization of FEDEX funding/obligations. Streamlined process to eliminate field interaction with FSMS for FEDEX shipments.
- Working with IBM to update FSMS vendor banking information (SAM.gov interface issue) to help expedite invoice payments.
- Executed two system patches on March 24, 2022, to improve system performance.
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