Review of the Departmental Financial Management System Renewal Project: chapter 1
Executive Summary
A System Under Development (SUD) Review of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC’s) Departmental Financial Management System (DFMS) Renewal Project was included in the departmental 2013 Risk-Based Audit and Evaluation Plan approved by the Deputy Minister, upon recommendation by the External Audit Advisory Committee (EAAC).
The purpose of the review was to assess the appropriateness of the project management approach used to successfully implement the Systems, Applications and Products (SAP) software at ECCC.
A SUD Review differs from other internal reviews or audits in its approach, since work is carried out during the implementation project. This review proceeded in parallel with the work of the implementation project team, and interim reports on findings were submitted in December 2014 and February 2015. A briefing on the contents of the interim reports was presented to the EAAC in March 2015.
Overall, the review found that the project management approach used by the DFMS Renewal Project team was appropriate and that project management controls and practices were applied effectively by ECCC. Strong project management practices related to regular and timely reporting of project status, issues and risks; ECCC’s focus on the need to ensure that business process changes were well aligned with the implementation of new SAP technology; and the embedding of ECCC functional experts with the technical SAP team at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada were noted. The review, however, did find several exceptions that posed risks to the overall success of the implementation project. These include risks related to ongoing implementation of asset management functions in SAP, operational support of the new DFMS and internal controls. To address the findings in this report, the following recommendations are presented:
Recommendation 1
The Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM), Corporate Services Branch should ensure that proper governance structure and direction for the implementation of the Enterprise Asset Management module (EAM Phase 2) exists, and that this governance structure includes an active Project Steering Committee.
Recommendation 2
The ADM, Corporate Services Branch and ADM, Finance Branch should ensure that skills related to technical requirements of assets management functions in SAP and to project management skills and practices that were developed by ECCC team members during the project prior to April 1, 2015 are retained for the EAM Phase 2 implementation.
Recommendation 3
The ADM, Finance Branch and ADM, Corporate Services Branch should ensure that support to users through ECCC’s support organization is available post-implementation and that support to users is coordinated between the two branches.
Recommendation 4
The ADM, Finance Branch should ensure that the documentation and testing of internal controls impacted by the SAP implementation are completed in a timely manner.
Management Response
The assistant deputy ministers of the Corporate Services and Finance branches agree with the recommendations. The detailed management responses can be found under Section 2 of this report.
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