Sustainable Public Financial Management

 Doug Hadden, VP Products

The 2011 FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) conference ended last week after a packed agenda. The content useful for Public Financial Management (PFM) practitioners or FreeBalance Accountability Suite users was posted to this blog and the FreeBalance twitter account with the #fisc2011 has tag. As we described in an earlier post, FISC delegates are presented with the current product roadmap for the next two years. Delegates add new items and vote. We think that this is a good customer-centric practice rather than the traditional “here’s what you’re going to get” user group approach favoured by many software companies.

Don’t Call it a User Group!

The Steering Committee approach differs from User Groups:

• User Groups tend to be governed directly by customers. FreeBalance selects customers who can make a difference.
• Vendors typically present product, vision & roadmap at these events. There is no formal method of changing the roadmap. There is no domain knowledge transfer. Knowledge transfer is an important FISC deliverable. The roadmap is adapted.
• Salespeople are prevalent at User Groups. There are no salespeople at FISC.
• Delegates pay their way to User Groups and pay entrance fee. FreeBalance contributes to these costs to ensure participation by thought leaders.
• Company executives are briefly accessible at User Groups. FreeBalance executives participate directly in the event, provide content and take part in domain and roadmap discussions.

• User Groups own no percentage of vendor R&D budget. FISC owns 20% of the FreeBalance R&D budget.

Roadmap Results

FISC delegates voted on 43 application ideas, 6 of which were suggestedby the group and the rest by FreeBalance. These applications do not include those that have already been delivered or are contractually committed for delivery.

Current modules, sub-modules, add-ons and components include:

• Platform: 14 applications
• Configuration: 18 applications + 1 committed
• Capacity Building: 1 application
• Government Performance Management: 11 applications + 1 committed
• Public Financials Management (core financial apps): 4 applications
• Government Treasury Management: 3 applications + 2 committed
• Public Expenditures Management: 7 applications
• Government Receipts Management: 1 application
• Civil Service Management: 14 applications + 1 committed

Delegates were able to vote on the top 5 priorities. Results were rationalized to a scale of 0 to 100. The results were:

• 2 Very High Priority Requirements (Score Range: 91 to 100)
• 3 High Requirements (Score Range: 48 to 64)
• 7 Medium Requirements (Score Range: 18 to 27)
• 10 Low Requirements (Score Range: 7 to 14)
• 21 Very Low Requirements (Score: 0)

Some interesting observations:

• 10 Government Performance Management applications scored the most points and the highest average
• 8 Capacity Building, 8 Public Financial Management and 2 Government Treasury Management applications had medium scores
• 11 Government Receipts Management applications had very low scores
• There were 0 Civil Service Management applications because the current product footprint is large
• 3 of the top 4 vote getters already have FreeBalance market requirements

About FISC

The annual FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) conference runs from January 16 – 19, 2011 in Madeira, Portugal. FISC provides an interactive forum to exchange Public Financial Management (PFM) good practices among international customers and PFM thought leaders. FISC drives the FreeBalance Accountability Suite product vision to direct FreeBalance GRP solutions. Previous FISC events were held in Mt. Tremblant, Canada (2010); Prague, Czech Republic (2009); Cascais, Portugal (2008); and London, United Kingdom (2007).

Doug Hadden, FreeBalance Vice President Products, presented the draft FreeBalance product roadmap. FreeBalance leverages   the 6 Thinking Hats linear thinking approach for product roadmap discussion and decision. The product roadmap includes modules, sub-modules and components aligned to the Public Financial Management Component Map. The status of every roadmap item was described including those that were completed in Version 7 in 2010. Numerous roadmap items represent the FreeBalance product vision. Some were proposed recently by customers. These were all described in detail with and discussed. Mr. Hadden reminded the delegates of recent PEFA assessments and results of the FreeBalance Customer Survey: current challenges and PFM priorities.

Delegates are presented the roadmap and select items that should be delivered in the short (2011), medium (2012) and long-term (after 2012). The voting occurs on the last day of FISC so that delegates have time to analyze all of the items.

There was a spirited discussion of how to handle off-budget management. Many FreeBalance customers have progressed from operational issues like cash management and controls to considering risk management monitoring and evaluation systems.

About FISC

The annual FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) conference runs from January 16 – 19, 2011 in Madeira, Portugal. FISC provides an interactive forum to exchange Public Financial Management (PFM) good practices among international customers and PFM thought leaders. FISC drives the FreeBalance Accountability Suite product vision to direct FreeBalance GRP solutions. Previous FISC events were held in Mt. Tremblant, Canada (2010); Prague, Czech Republic (2009); Cascais, Portugal (2008); and London, United Kingdom (2007).

by Doug Hadden, VP Products

Software vendors have conditioned customers to expect a product roadmap. These roadmaps show how the vendor intends to add product features, and when those features will be available.  It’s too bad if the vendor does not intend to deliver the features you need when you need them. Or, that the product will be released at an inconvenient time. Or, that you will be forced to upgrade. These are very real concerns for our government clients.

Governments are budget driven. Upgrading software costs money, therefore needs to be planned well in advance. And, the upgraded software needs to be fully tested so that it can go into production in the next fiscal year. Not all government fiscal years are the same. (Our customers operate on 6 different fiscal year cycles.)

I’ve been confering with our Government of Canada Cluster and the FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) about our product roadmap. Our short-term roadmap is driven by our product commitments. The long-term roadmap is also set by customers. We wll be consulting with our customers as we prepare the 2+ year roadmap. This will result in an updated roadmap published to our customers after our FISC meeting in late January.

The roadmap features and delivery schedule will be set by customers. We continue to support older versions of our software in order to accomodate customer budget cycles. It’s a different approach – perhaps the roadmap less traveled.