What is FI$Cal?

From FI$Cal:

The Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) began as a business transformation project in 2005, and was formalized with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2007 by the State Controller, the State Treasurer, and the Directors of the Departments of Finance and General Services.

FI$Cal is one of the largest and most dynamic information technology (IT) undertakings in the history of the state. FI$Cal enables the State of California to combine accounting, budgeting, cash management, and procurement operations into a single financial management system. This eliminates the need for hundreds of independent legacy systems and state-entity-specific applications that support the state’s internal financial management operations. FI$Cal provides more standardization, transparency, discipline, effectiveness, and efficiency for the state’s crucial business processes. FI$Cal employs a robust change management program with extensive training and outreach activities to ensure the system’s successful implementation.

When completely implemented, more than 160 state entities and 15,000 end users will conduct the financial business of California with the FI$Cal system.

In July 2016, FI$Cal was formally recognized as a new State of California department. The department is working toward full management and operation of its FI$Cal system.

From the Legislative Analyst’s Office:

• FI$Cal is an information technology (IT) project currently underway by a partnership of control agencies including the Department of Finance, the State Controller’s Office (SCO), the State Treasurer’s Office (STO), and the Department of General Services (DGS). FI$Cal replaces the state’s aging and decentralized IT financial systems with a new system that will integrate state government processes in the areas of budgeting, accounting, cash management, and procurement.
  • Current Estimated Cost. $910 million ($494 million General Fund), making FI$Cal the most costly state IT undertaking to date.
  • Current Estimated Completion Date. July 2019

• Anticipated Benefits. The FI$Cal project has several anticipated benefits.
  • Eliminates the need for over 2,500 department-specific applications.
  • Enables the state financial systems and workforce to function in an integrated environment.
  • Automates processes that are currently highly manual.
  • Improves tracking of statewide expenditures and standardizes the state’s financial practices.
  • Makes information more readily available to the public and the state’s business partners.

We’ve contracted with FI$Cal and with DGS (one of the four controlling agencies) to implement the interfaces between the two departments so we’ve been on both sides of the fence. When adapting legacy applications to work with FI$Cal, usually file-based interfaces will be used and we’ve built a portable system to accelerate the development of these interfaces and the same technology can be used with conversions. We’ve also built the tools required to interface with FI$Cal using web services.

• File Interfaces
• Web Service Interfaces
• Conversions

If FI$Cal is coming to your department, contact us. We can help get your systems connected in the least amount of time because we’ve done it before and have the templates ready.

Read more about the FI$Cal project (and now department)

FI$Cal Releases (filterable and sortable)

FI$Cal

• History of FI$Cal
• Reports
• SPR 7

Legislative Analyst’s Office

• February 9, 2017 Report
• The 2016-17 Budget: Evaluating FI$Cal

Search the Sacramento Bee

From the State Auditor