Folio’s Life Cycle Costs (LCC) table development is a story that combines past experience with current industry trends to position you for success. The LCC table will establish a single point of entry for all cost data, making it easier for your agency to report cost data (e.g., by Funding Source, TBM Cost Pool, etc.). Just capture data one time, and Folio can organize it for various reporting needs.
The LCC table will give you flexibility to easily comply with continually evolving OMB Capital Planning Guidance requirements. We are building the Folio LCC table with the following goals in mind:
- Create a single point of cost data entry;
- Improve cost traceability;
- Improve the user experience;
- Ensure long-term flexibility.
Background
OMB is working with agencies to adopt the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework1 for annual Capital Planning Guidance2. Folio, therefore, must have a flexible solution for capturing agency costs that includes both TBM data and existing OMB data. Often, these cost reporting requirements use the same data set sliced different ways, which poses unique data collection challenges for agencies.
This is a Wireframe of the proposed Life Cycle Costs table.
The LCC table will leverage additional data points associated with each table line item, to categorize each cost so it can be used to populate required reports, while the table acts as the single point of record. We know that all agencies may not be able to associate the same amount of data with each cost, so the LCC table will give you flexibility around which fields are required when entering data.
Benefits
Benefits of the LCC table approach include:
- Simplified Data Entry: You can align cost and budget items to Funding Sources, Cost Pools and IT Towers. Leveraging this data, Folio will automatically build the existing Funding Sources, Life Cycle Costs, and TBM data points for submission to the IT Dashboard.
- Traceability: All the data is derived from a single source table in Folio, so your agency will have full traceability of each dollar budgeted or spent.
- Ease-of-Use: The out-of-the-box LCC table offers a way to name each item so that you can easily identify the data you wish to update. Line Items will correspond to spending items, so PMs can intuitively identify where to edit spending.
- Flexibility: The structure of the LCC table is flexible, to easily adapt to future OMB requirements that are not yet defined. Folio is positioned for maximum adaptability to these unknown changes down the road.
Through the LCC table, Folio can adapt to changing regulatory requirements from OMB and shifting agency demands. Whether OMB overhauls the TBM portion of the Capital Planning Guidance, or an agency needs to automate data collection from a Financial Management System, Folio’s LCC table will ensure a workable solution for your agency.
We hope you find this approach to capturing costs in Folio makes sense. Drop us a line at folio.pmo@gsa.gov to tell us your thoughts or ask questions, and explore our other posts to see what else you have to look forward to!
1) President Management Agenda (PMA) Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) Goal #10: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-President%E2%80%99s-Management-Agenda.pdf
2) FY 2019 IT Budget – Capital Planning Guidance: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/assets/egov_docs/fy19_it_budget_guidance.pdf
