Defense Finance and Accounting Service

Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) is the largest finance and accounting operation in the world. As the Department's accounting firm, it is responsible for all DoD expenditures and each business day pays out more than $1B. With an original workforce of 28,000, DFAS today has about half that number and will finish Fiscal Year 2011 at less than 10,000.

DFAS's vision is transforming with the warfighter to remain the trusted financial partner for DoD. Transformation is the continuation of a customer focused change process that started with the creation of DFAS and will result in DFAS becoming a Center of Excellence (COE) for government finance and accounting whose ultimate objective is to optimize performance and maintain downward pressure on cost. DFAS is working to achieve this objective by reducing the number of systems, sites, and employees, as shown in Figure 9-1.

Key aspects of DFAS's transformation strategy to achieve the vision include establishing dynamic partnerships to execute Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, leveraging competitive sourcing initiatives, using the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) to help drive to a High Performing Organization (HPO), and implementing COE.

DFAS stands at a critical juncture in its transformation. Work to support America's warfighters continues amidst implementation of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) requirements, which creates opportunities to reduce excess capacity and costs.

DFAS Business Transformation Overview
DFAS has five long-term strategic goals which cascade throughout the organization, assisting in the development, refinement and prioritization of actionable initiatives and allocation of resources. The goals are:

Support DoD in winning the Global War on Terror
Lead transformation of finance and accounting functions throughout DoD
Perform the DFAS mission at best value for DoD
Attain operational excellence in finance and accounting services
Attract, develop, and retain a highly capable workforce with relevant skills and competencies

DFAS Priorities
To accomplish our transformation goals, the following priorities have been identified.

Reduce the number of urgent military pay problems – an integrated military payment Business Capability is essential to provide efficient and accurate military payroll processing
Improve financial performance by automating manual processes, eliminating redundancies, and by promoting risk management – being a trusted financial partner includes leading the way in integrating technological advances in finance and accounting practices
Expand electronic commerce capability – to improve accuracy and timeliness of transaction processing, a paper-based environment must be replaced by electronic processing to provide single-source entry, electronic transmission of data, and electronic storage of data

Cases In Point:

Support for the Wounded In Action (WIA)

Soldiers and Civilians Deploy to support Deployable Disbursing System

Enterprise Risk Management Program-Business Activity Monitoring