I write to you this month for the last time as the Executive Director of the One Washington program. Effective September 1, 2021, I will be leaving the Office of Financial Management to assume a new role at the University of Washington, Tacoma. I have spent the last two years and nine months helping to move One Washington from an idea to reality. It is bittersweet to be leaving a program that means so much to me and with an exciting future ahead of it. It has been a pleasure working with this talented and hard-working team and I wish you continued success along the way.
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I am excited to announce that Scott Nicholson, the current deputy assistant director for OFM’s State Human Resources Division, has agreed to serve as interim executive director for One Washington. As many of you know, Scott has been heavily involved with One Washington, serving as the Human Capital Management business owner for the past 18 months. He has the right knowledge, skill set, and enthusiasm to build on our momentum and carry the program towards Phase 1a go live. Scott comes to this role with in-depth understanding of where the program has come from and a vision for the future.
A permanent replacement for executive director will be named sometime in the next few months. In the interim, I am confident Scott will keep One Washington on track and running smoothly.
These are exciting and challenging times for the One Washington program as we march toward launching the first phase of the Workday implementation in October 2022. Thank you for your dedication and continued commitment to the success of One Washington. I look forward to continuing to follow the program’s future successes.
Best,
Vann
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FDM BLUEPRINT UPDATE
As we have described in the past, the Financial Data Model is the core data structure within Workday and provides concepts that will be used throughout the Workday solution. It will serve as the replacement for the current Chart of Accounts and establishes the foundation for core accounting and operational (transaction) data, management information and reporting. The FDM is comprised of Workday organizations and worktags. A worktag is an attribute that you can assign to events and objects to indicate their business purpose (e.g. create a customer worktag, whose values are the names of your customers).
What are the updates to the FDM Blueprint?
Since the first FDM Blueprint was released in the spring, the program has fine-tuned the definitions and use of worktags based on prototyping activities, which has produced an updated FDM Blueprint. The FDM Blueprint identifies state dimensions to facilitate financial statement and management reporting across the state, high-level mapping of Workday FDM dimensions to legacy system with examples, proposed FDM dimension naming conventions, and an initial draft of how the Agency Financial Reporting System will be transitioned to the Workday FDM. The updated FDM Blueprint was sent to Agency Support Team (AST) leads and subject matter experts involved in design sessions.
As previously mentioned, the development of the One Washington solution will constantly evolve to reflect new requirements and to continue to align Workday more closely with agency needs. As such, this document represents the FDM design at a point in time. It will be established initially in Phase 1a while considering the effects of full-phase roll-out of Phase 1b, Phase 2, and Phase 3 on the FDM. It will be periodically refined during the implementation to represent changes in the data model as it is vetted through use in Workday over the life of the project, including subsequent phases.
Why is the FDM Blueprint important?
Agencies will utilize the document as a tool when making updates to their agency specific FDM mapping file. The FDM mapping file is unique to each agency and is the mechanism to record how their current chart of accounts will map to the new Workday system. Certain agencies are larger with additional complexity and will require more in-depth reviews to achieve transition. Completion of the mapping activities will provide a pathway to further develop the Workday system replacing AFRS.
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ONE WASHINGTON HOT TOPICS
With so much happening within the One Washington program it can be difficult to stay on top of everything. We recognize a need to distill the main activities that are occurring within the project to quickly and easily stay up to date. Each month, we will provide an update on “Hot Topics” to assist in staying up to speed with the program.
Cost allocation
The Phase 1a go live date was extended by three months from July 2022 to October 2022. This extension allows for the team to work through additional cost allocation requirements and testing so that the system is ready to go on day one. Three cycles for end-to-end testing will be included for all aspects and components of Workday and its interfaces with other systems. The plan is to do a mock cut-over in July 2022 with testing and remediation activities.
Phase 1a go-live timeline shift
Although Phase 1a has been delayed by 90 days, the program is still on track to meet established timelines and milestones from the initial project plan. Tenant 2 build will be complete by October 2021, and the end-to-end user testing tenant build will be complete by December 2021. Integrations, conversions, and system remediation activities are also in motion to be complete by December 2021, which will allow us to begin end-to-end user testing in January 2022. Likewise, we are progressing to kick-off Phase 1b activities as planned in the new year.
FDM mapping & system remediation
FDM Mapping is currently in its third iteration, with agencies continuing to update their agency-specific workbooks. Legacy system and third-party system remediation are dependent upon it. As the mapping activities progress, many agencies are finding they need more time to focus on their agency specific chart of accounts usage. As a result, the One Washington program has worked through an alternative timeline to allow remediation to occur over a longer period. This will happen in parallel with the FDM and COA crosswalk. More information is to come as the team works diligently to make the needed adjustments.
Technology and OCM agency funding pools
Determination letters have been sent to agencies that applied for the One Washington technology funding pool and agency OCM pool funds. The program is now working with agencies who received funding to determine the resources most useful to each agency. Simultaneously, One Washington is utilizing this information while hiring for the agency OCM pool. Candidates cannot be hired “directly” into agencies. The One Washington program is accountable for hiring these new OFM employees who will then be assigned to the program and allocated to agencies to provide OCM support for Phase 1a.
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We spoke with Josh Chaplo, the Innovations and Strategies Manager and Agency Support Team Lead for DFW to ask him about DFW’s engagement with One Washington and how his agency is preparing to transition to the new Workday system.
What is DFW doing to prepare for One Washington?
Our agency is working hard to build awareness for the program across the agency. We feel it is important to have leadership involvement in One Washington to aid in this process, which is why DFW’s Deputy Director, Amy Windrope, is our AST Sponsor, and our Chief Financial Officer, Morgan Stinson, is heavily engaged with the program.
We utilize Microsoft Teams for communicating within our agency on a dedicated One Washington channel. We also provide many opportunities to engage with agency staff who will be the most impacted via listening sessions, and question and answer sessions with people in DFW who are engaged in finance, contracts and purchasing, system development, and information technology.
What are you most looking forward to in the new Workday system?
The new system is going to be a huge step forward compared to what currently exists with AFRS. Our leadership and mid-level management teams are excited for a more modern system that will help us attract and retain new talent. It is difficult to show new people how to use this antiquated system and it does not allow for our employees to gain the latest technology skills that are crucial for their professional development.
We recognize some people may be hesitant to embrace Workday because they are concerned that their roles will shift drastically or that their skills will no longer be needed. In fact, the opposite is true – Workday is a tool that will help automate repetitive tasks and allow staff to spend more time on activities such as data analysis which will make better use of their skills and experience.
Along these lines, a modern system that has mobile compatibility will be extremely helpful in allowing our employees to have the option work remotely more easily. Given the current shifts in workplace models, the cloud-based system will be beneficial for our staff.
DFW recently participated in a Proof of Concept with One Washington. What additional insight were you able to glean from participating in that process?
The big takeaway for me was to get budget teams more heavily involved in this process. While the fiscal folks are needed to help understand the nuts and bolts of the master index and program index, the budget team members are the ones who do more of the analysis for reporting and understand what the public and legislative bodies want and need to know. The finance team members are the cooks in the kitchen, putting together the meals, but the budget folks are the servers who present the finished product in a palatable manner.
This process also opened my eyes about the need to do crosswalks between programs and that we will need to move away from our reliance on the master and program indexes. There is more behind-the-scenes work agencies will need to do to get their ducks in a row to make sure that their current activities are effectively mapped into Workday.
As a result of participating in the Proof of Concept, we have been able to see more of what’s going on with Workday functionality. As we see more, we become more comfortable with the system. Overall, Workday is user-friendly and intuitive. The more you interact with Workday, the more intuitive it becomes, which helps to alleviate anxiety and fears.
What recommendations do you have for other agencies as they get deeper into their One Washington journey?
The centralization of communication, resources, documentation, and questions into a single location makes it much easier to keep track of everything. Our Teams group has been crucial to help keep our One Washington information organized and easy to access. Currently, a smaller subset of our agency uses the Teams group, but we intend to roll out a question and answer channel more widely across the agency as we get closer to go live.
We have also been intentional in working with people in programs with different subject matter expertise across the agency who are friendly, and easy to talk to. Staff want to be able to talk to people who understand what Workday can deliver related to the needs of their program. It’s better to have SMEs they can go to instead of a central hub.
The last thing I’ll mention is related to the system’s Foundation Data Model (FDM). The biggest realization that most folks need to grasp is that the master index and program index structures are going to be retired. This is going to cause some large changes, which can be nerve-wracking. Once we work through that piece of the planning and understanding, we will be ready to go.
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RESOURCES
The following list represents some of the resources available on our website:
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One Washington benefits: Learn more about the benefits of the One Washington program.
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Hybrid agile one-pager: Learn about agile techniques for the design and development of the Workday solution.
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Why Workday one-pager: Description of why the state selected Workday as the ERP system vendor.
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SaaS 101: Background information about Software as a Service solutions.
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ERP 101: Find information about what an Enterprise Resource Planning system is to help ground your understanding of the changes you can expect with the One Washington project.
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Modernization roadmap: Find more detail about upcoming One Washington milestones.
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Frequently asked questions: Find answers to common One Washington questions on our FAQ page.
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