Jane Edwards
Margie Graves, senior fellow at the IBM Center for The Business of Government, said the technology base of the National Finance Center within the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires an immediate “stabilization” and long-term modernization, Federal News Network reported Monday.
The National Academy of Public Administration issued a report in July recommending that NFC implement organizational transformation initiatives, improve employee and customer experience and advance information technology modernization to meet priorities and modernize operations as it delivers shared services to federal employees and retirees.
New Orleans-based NFC provides payroll, human resources and retirement services to over 600,000 federal employees and offers 23 financial-related applications.
Graves, a co-author of the NAPA study, said NFC may not only be the shared services provider in the government facing leadership and workforce issues and technical debt and that it would take years to outsource the center’s functions to a commercial company.
“It’s not like there’s a place to migrate or that there’s anything immediately available where you could offload,” Graves stated.
