REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

RFI for Audit of IRIS ERP System Page 1 of 2 Issue Date: September 19, 2014

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

STATE OF ALASKA

DIVISION OF LEGISLATIVE AUDIT

Audit of Alaska’s Integrated Resource Information Systems Enterprise Resource and Planning system

Please respond no later than 5:00 PM Alaska Time, Monday, October 13, 2014

General Information about the RFI:

The Division of Legislative Audit (DLA) is seeking letters of interest and qualifications from firms having expertise in the audit of Enterprise Resource and Planning (ERP) systems to perform an audit of the State’s Integrated Resource Information System (IRIS). IRIS is an ERP system planned for implementation beginning July 1, 2015 that will be heavily relied upon by State of Alaska departments for their financial and operational practices.

DLA serves as the State’s group auditor for the audit of the State’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (CAFR) and Statewide Single Audit. DLA is evaluating the use of a contractor to conduct a performance audit of the IRIS system.

The objective of the audit will be to assess the design and operating effectiveness of key system controls over the financial and payroll modules during FY16. The audit must be done in accordance with standards applicable to performance audits contained in the Government Auditing Standards, issued by the Comptroller of the United States. It is anticipated that the audit will be performed between the dates of September 2015 and September 2016. The contractor is expected to be responsible for all field work, analysis, and final report writing for this audit.

The purpose of this RFI is to:

1. Help DLA gain an understanding of the level of interest of potential bidders. 2. Help DLA gain an understanding of the potential project cost for use in budgeting.

3. Help DLA gain an understanding of the estimated duration required to complete the audit. 4. Inform potential bidders of a possible upcoming procurement for audit services.

Introduction to the IRIS System:

IRIS provides the State of Alaska with an integrated solution for: accounting, financial, procurement, payroll, and human resources management. The solution is supported by CGI’s Advantage® ERP product which is a combination of technology and integrated business applications that are specifically built for government use.

IRIS is being implemented in phases. Advantage Financial & Procurement (FIN) solution will be implemented July 1, 2015. Upon completion of this phase, IRIS becomes the system of record for the

State of Alaska’s financial, procurement, inventory, and vendor information. The Human Resource Management and Payroll (HRM) solution will be implemented January 1, 2016.

A general overview of the FIN and HRM solutions are attached (Attachment A) to this notice.

Response Information:

Interested firms are invited to submit a letter of interest to include a response to the following: 1. Provide a general description of your firm’s capabilities and experience related to auditing

an ERP system.

2. Indicate the availability of your firm to perform the audit in the timeframe listed above. 3. Indicate the estimated duration required for your firm to complete the audit.

4. A cost estimate to conduct an audit of the IRIS ERP system.

Responses to this RFI are for informational purposes only, therefore, a cost estimate range is sufficient. Respondents will not be held to the cost estimate if they choose to respond to a future RFP for an IRIS audit. Respondents to this RFI shall limit their letter of interest to no more than three pages in length.

Interested parties are required to submit their response in writing by 5:00 PM Alaska Time,

October 13, 2014 to:

Division of Legislative Audit Attention: Ross Alexander PO Box 113300

Juneau, Alaska 99811-3300 Phone: (907) 465-3830 Fax: (907) 465-2347

Email: [email protected]

NOTE: Faxed and emailed transmission will be acceptable. It is the responsibility of the interested party to follow-up with the individual listed above to ensure that your information package was received prior to the time and date specified.

The information contained in this RFI is subject to errors, omissions, modifications, withdrawals, or cancellation without prior notice. The publication of this RFI does not confer any rights to

prospective vendors and does not obligate DLA to engage in any procurement or to purchase any services.

Questions about this RFI can be directed to Ross Alexander at [email protected] or (907) 465-3830.

RFI for Audit of IRIS ERP System, Attachment A Page 1 of 7 Issue Date: September 19, 2014

ATTACHMENT A

OVERVIEW OF THE IRIS ERP SYSTEM

1 O

VERVIEW

The Integrated Resource Information System (IRIS) provides the State of Alaska (SOA) with an integrated solution for: accounting, financial, procurement, payroll and human resources management. At the core of this solution is CGI’s Advantage® Enterprise Resource and Planning (ERP) product suite which is a powerful combination of modern technology and integrated business applications that are specifically built for government use. With integrated functionality, workflow, and highly-configurable processes, IRIS helps to minimize code customizations and reduce the overall cost of ownership.

Four phases make up the full IRIS implementation. This overview focuses on Phase 3 which will implement the Advantage Financial & Procurement (FIN) solution. Upon completion of this phase, IRIS becomes the system of record for the SOA’s financial, procurement, inventory, and vendor information.

1.1

P

The purpose of this document is to generally document the major components of the IRIS solution and their interfaces in a concise manner that is easily absorbed by those new to IRIS.

1.2

A

The document’s audience is firms with information technology audit experience that seek to develop a high-level understanding of the IRIS solution.

1.3

A

A

O

Phase 3 of the IRIS project will implement several important components of the overall IRIS solution with a focus on Financial & Procurement functions. The existing AKSAS financial application will be replaced by the Advantage Financial application. For the first time the SOA’s procurement functions will be centralized using Advantage’s Procurement component. The ALDER2.0 data warehouse will extend the State’s existing ALDER1.0 system. Data from the new Advantage Financial & Procurement system will be loaded into ALDER2.0 to support SOA’s reporting and data analysis needs. The SymPro Treasury Management application was implemented to track fixed income portfolios and feed relevant information into the new Advantage Financial application. The LearnAlaska Learning Management System (LMS) was implemented as part of the IRIS Phase 2 effort and provides self-service training to SOA employees. Currently LearnAlaska interfaces with SOA’s AKPAY application but in the future will be integrated with the Advantage Human Resources Management (HRM) and Advantage Financial application. SOA agencies, along with the IRIS Project Team will work to create the appropriate interfaces that will allow the IRIS solution to service their financial and procurement needs.

For a graphical representation of the IRIS Application Architecture refer to Exhibit 1 below. Note that items in grey (e.g., HRM Payroll) are part of the IRIS Phase 4 release but have been included in the diagram due to their significance to the over-all IRIS solution.

RFI for Audit of IRIS ERP System, Attachment A Page 3 of 7 Issue Date: September 19, 2014

2 I

NTERFACES

2.1

I

To support SOA’s financial and procurement management functions, the Advantage Financial and Procurement components will exchange data with multiple SOA agencies and external organizations. In general, data exchanges are classified as either an inbound interface or an outbound interface. Inbound interfaces are those files received from external systems that provide data to IRIS. These interface feeds can come from SOA agencies or external entities, such as banks. Inbound interfaces submit data to IRIS in the form of either new records or modifications to existing records. Outbound interfaces provide information from IRIS to other departmental applications or systems external to the SOA. The frequency of the execution of the interface process can vary from daily to annually, depending on the business need.

2.2

I

D

IRIS Phase 3 makes use of approximately 90 interfaces that carry data to and from IRIS Financial and Procurement and other applications. The interfaces are designed, developed and tested by a blended team made up of contributors from the IRIS project team and the SOA’s departments. The implementation of the interface designs are achieved primarily by use of the Pervasive Data Integration (PDI) ETL (Extract-Transformation-Load) tool. The interfaces created by the departments are both inbound and outbound. The files they create and take in are in various formats (e.g., XML, character delimited, fixed format, etc.).

As in conversions, cross-walk tables are used by some IRIS interfaces to translate AKSAS accounting structures to the IRIS structures. These tables are used by providing a data string in a predefined format and “crosswalking” it to its corresponding IRIS values. The resulting value(s) are then inserted in the interface data.

3 D

ATA

W

AREHOUSE

:

ALDER2.0

3.1

I

With the implementation of IRIS the SOA will transition from an environment where business functions and databases are isolated among departments, to an environment where information is shared across business functions and organizational units. A key component of IRIS data sharing is the ALDER2.0 (Alaska Data Enterprise Reporting) Data Warehouse.

ALDER1.0 is the SOA’s current data warehouse and reporting environment that houses AKPAY, AKSAS and historical recruiting data from the decommissioned WPA (Workplace Alaska) system. Due to IRIS’s phased implementation, ALDER2.0’s IRIS support will also roll out in a phased fashion. The first interim deployment of ALDER2.0 will support the Financial/Procurement functions

deployed in IRIS Phase 3. The next deployment of ALDER2.0 will add support for the human

resources functions to be deployed in IRIS Phase 4. ALDER2.0 leverages the SOA’s investment in the ALDER1.0 solution and extends it to include the information made available by the implementation of IRIS. ALDER2.0 is positioned to provide flexible end-user ad-hoc reporting in a manner they are currently familiar with, and to deliver enterprise level business performance measurement.

3.2

ALDER2.0

(IRIS

E

S

)

A key objective of the IRIS project is to support comprehensive decision making by providing stakeholders with up-to-date information in a format that is easily consumable. In addition to providing standard financial reports and procurement workflow information a set of Key

Performance Indicators (KPI) have been designed that will measure the health of the IRIS business processes. Taken together these KPIs and standard reports will enhance transparency into the workings of Alaska State government.

ALDER2.0 features five broad functional areas, each of which is divided into more discrete,

functional areas. IRIS provides procurement, accounting, payroll, and human resources data, while the fifth, recruitment, will continue to be exported from WPA. ALDER2.0 will be hosted in the same environment as its predecessor but will utilize new database schemas, new script folders in a new abstraction layer, and new “universes” as part of the semantic layer. The existing schemas,

abstraction layers and universes for the WPA reports will be preserved and maintained into ALDER2.0. Additionally, existing schemas, abstraction layers and universes for existing AKSAS reports and data will be preserved, though not updated in ALDER2.0.

While ALDER2.0 will include ad-hoc reporting capabilities similar to that in the existing ALDER1.0 solution, it is anticipated that as the new capabilities of IRIS provide more robust day-to-day information management capabilities, the focus of reporting in the data warehouse will shift to reports that are management and analytical based. These classes of reports include dash-boards, performance measurement, predictive analysis, trending, data mining, and historical analysis. ALDER2.0 is positioned to provide both operational and business intelligence reporting.

RFI for Audit of IRIS ERP System, Attachment A Page 5 of 7 Issue Date: September 19, 2014

Since IRIS Financial and Procurement will be deployed first, while AKPAY still supports SOA’s Human Resources functions during IRIS Phase 3, an interim deployment of ALDER2.0 to production will also take place in Phase 3. As shown in Exhibit 2 below, during the interim period, information will continue to be loaded from AKPAY into the existing ALDER1.0 data warehouse. Access to historical information is provided through the existing data warehouse, financial universe and reporting library.

Exhibit 3 below presents the flow of information once IRIS is fully implemented, from raw data, imported from IRIS, to final reports, as well as the flow of information in the current ALDER1.0 environment.

RFI for Audit of IRIS ERP System, Attachment A Page 7 of 7 Issue Date: September 19, 2014

4 T

ERMINOLOGY

Terminology used in this document is listed below.

Term / Acronym Definition

Advantage FIN Financial & Procurement Advantage HRM Human Resources Management

AKPAY Alaska Payroll application that supports the State’s Human Resource functions until IRIS HRM takes over that function.

AKSAS Alaska System application that supports the State’s Financial functions until IRIS FIN takes over that function.

DOA Department of Administration

DOF Division of Finance

ETL Extension Transformation Load

IRIS Integrated Resource Information System

LearnAlaska SOA’s Learning Management System which is based on Meridian Global’s LMS product.

WPA Workplace Alaska