Utah, a CGI partner for over 30 years, has taken strategic steps to ensure seamless delivery of digital government services. The state is exploring innovative technologies to improve efficiency, enhance security, privacy, and compliance, and provide a streamlined experience for citizens, employees, and vendors. A recent move to the cloud with CGI Advantage supports one of the state’s priorities: eliminating the risk of technical debt—a lack of modern security features, and the potential future rework required with a legacy solution.
Maximizing efficiency and security
Utah controls its financial resources through CGI Advantage Financial Management Software. This platform offers real-time data access to support better decision-making, continuous releases to ensure access to the latest features, and mobile capabilities to support remote, office-based, or hybrid working models.
Ironclad system security and disaster recovery capabilities were priorities for the state, as was eliminating technical debt. Moving to the cloud with CGI Advantage enabled real-time connection with more than 120 interfaces coming into the system. It also eliminated the need for manual upgrades, which were undertaken about every five years when the system was on-premises.
Jon Ellis, former Assistant Director of Financial Information Systems for the Division of Finance at Utah, noted that new capabilities eliminate the need for manual entry and allow Utah’s team to manage data more efficiently. Ellis has worked with CGI Advantage in several roles he’s held with the state. “In a past project, we were consolidating three to four state agencies through a series of external, manual steps,” he said. “With today’s system, we can take advantage of functionality allowing us to crosswalk receivables, purchase orders, and fixed assets, streamlining the whole process.”
Ellis also noted that the system’s configurability can drive a different way of thinking about creating efficiencies across other processes and systems. One of the processes the team has improved is the 1099 reporting system. They’ve eliminated manual steps and now capture information that a third party previously gathered internally. CGI Advantage provides a user-friendly experience and is easy to navigate, according to Ellis, who cited the advanced global search as especially useful.
As we move forward, all of our information will be in one place instead of six or seven different systems because CGI Advantage is structured to focus on government accounting; we don’t have to jump through hoops to get things right.
former Assistant Director of Financial Information Systems for the Division of Finance at Utah
Future strategies
Utah’s move to the cloud has improved security, increased efficiency, and reduced concerns about technical debt. Future moves will also align with these priorities. The state is evaluating Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for invoice processing and exploring the management of data archival and cleanup.
Another area under consideration is vendor self-service, which would significantly reduce the time spent manually scrutinizing and processing the setup of electronic funds transfers (EFT) for vendors. Automating this process would also provide additional security on the front end to ensure only authorized users could make changes.
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