The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) has awarded a multiple and option year contract valued at just over $21 million to replace and update its financial management information system (FMIS). The agency awarded the contract to CGI Federal, a wholly owned subsidiary of CGI, an international firm specializing in information technology and business process services that has more than 35 years' experience supporting Federal agencies.

The RRB's new FMIS will be the agency's core system for budget formulation and execution, procurement, payment and receivable management, general ledger management, debt collection and external reporting. The new system uses web-based technology, which makes it more intuitive and user friendly.

The RRB will implement CGI's Momentum platform to provide enhanced functionality and performance in its financial management system. It will be replacing the Federal Financial System (FFS) platform, which was developed by American Management Systems, a company acquired by CGI in 2004. The RRB has used various versions of FFS, a mainframe-based system, for about 25 years.

Momentum is a commercial off-the-shelf software package that is widely used in the Federal sector, and it complies with requirements of the Office of  Management and Budget and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. CGI has overseen more than 80 successful implementations of Momentum for Federal agencies in the last 7 years. The hosted system will be installed for the RRB during the coming year, with a planned go-live date of October 1, 2013, which means it will be operational for fiscal year 2014.

Under the contract, CGI will perform implementation, including migration and integration, as well as systems operation and hosting services for the RRB for a period not to exceed 11 years. Implementation costs during fiscal year 2013 will total about $3.3 million, with annual operations and maintenance costs spread out over the balance of the contract.

In announcing the contract award, RRB Chief Financial Officer George Govan said, "Our goal for this effort is to modernize the agency's financial management with a current cloud-based solution that improves efficiency in data entry, storage, and processing while reducing manual, labor-intensive business processes. In addition, the new system will improve the accessibility and quality of our financial information."

The effort to select the contractor and software solution started in 2010 with an assessment of the current FFS system. Staff from throughout the agency was involved in this pre-migration phase, which included specifying requirements for the new system and supporting the procurement effort. The RRB issued a request for proposals in May 2012. Upon receipt of the proposals, a cross-functional team evaluated the proposed software solutions while a technical panel interviewed clients of the proposers. The RRB previously entered into a contract with KPMG LLP in September 2011 to provide technical assistance services in the areas of migration planning and systems acquisition activities for the hosted FMIS solution.

An independent Federal agency headquartered in Chicago, the RRB administers benefit programs totaling more than $11 billion annually under the Federal Railroad Retirement and Unemployment Insurance Acts for the nation's railroad workers and their families. 

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