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AIMD-94-77R 1 (1994-02-18)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackmq0001 and id is 1 raw text is: United States GAO General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 /5O &?K Accounting and Information Management Division B-256388 February 18, 1994 The Honorable Richard J. Durbin Chairman The Honorable Joe Skeen Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives This letter responds to your request for information about the Department of Agriculture's National Finance Center (NFC). On the basis of discussions with your respective staffs, we identified the (1) reasons for Agriculture's moratorium on accepting additional agencies as customers for NFC and (2) savings the Departments of the Treasury and Justice estimate they will realize by switching to Agriculture's payroll/personnel system. To identify reasons for the moratorium, we interviewed Agriculture headquarters officials, current and former NFC managers, and Office of Management and Budget officials. In addition, we obtained and analyzed documents related to the moratorium and obtained the estimated costs and savings associated with the Treasury and Justice conversions of their payroll/personnel processing to NFC. We also interviewed Treasury and Justice officials to discuss the costs and savings associated with the conversions. We did not independently verify the reported costs and savings. We performed our work between June 1993 and December 1993. BACKGROUND NFC was established in the early 1970s to provide administrative computer processing for Agriculture's various bureaus. In the mid-1980s, at the request of the Office of Management and Budget and after approval by the Secretary of Agriculture, NFC began establishing cross- servicing agreements to provide administrative computer processing for other federal agencies. Generally, agencies were accepted for cross-servicing under terms and GAO/AIMD-94-77R, Agriculture: NFC Moratorium