At A Glance Organization ITD is responsible for ensuring the quality transportation of interstate commerce, out-of-state visitors and Idaho's 1.2 million residents. The department oversees: 1,829 employees $500M annual budget Why CGI Understands government Built-for-government software Experienced and consistent team The Results All Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) and other federal project reimbursement components reside in one system First state to electronically submit NHTSA budget change and reimbursement requests Web-based timesheets for all employees, with detailed codes to support grant and project accounting needs Inventory and purchasing workflow

Customer Spotlight: Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) improves productivity and federal reporting through CGI's built-for-government services and solutions
By Cheryl Smith, Senior Consultant, AMS Advantage ERP Program

With a statewide network of more than 60,000 miles of road, about 4,000 bridges, 1,900 miles of rail lines, 125 public airports and the Port of Lewiston, Idaho's transportation system is the backbone of the state's economy.

Of these, the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) has jurisdictional responsibility for almost 5,000 miles of highway (or 12,000 lane miles), more than 1,700 bridges, 30 recreational and emergency airstrips, 30 rest areas, 10 fixed ports of entry and federal grants to 12 rural and urban public transportation systems. The department also provides state rail planning, rail-project development, and bicycle and pedestrian planning and projects.

ITD serves the state's 1.2 million residents by providing cost-effective transportation systems that are safe, reliable and responsible to the economical and efficient movement of people and products.

The Challenge
ITD recognized that to better achieve its mission and prepare for the state's future requirements they needed a truly integrated fund accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In looking for a solution built with government in mind, ITD sought a user friendly system they could operate on their own with few customizations.

For example, ITD had been relying on two disparate systems to track federal highways projects—one of the department's most important requirements—and to accumulate reimbursable expenditures and generate weekly reimbursement billings. After years of waiting for a federal aid billing component from their then-ERP vendor, they realized the current system was not a good fit for them as it wasn't built to serve government needs.

The Strategy
In June 2003, ITD issued a request for proposal (RFP) for an integrated fund, highways project accounting and ERP system to replace their current Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS). After careful review, ITD selected CGI to replace their aging system because of CGI's web-based, built-for-government AMS Advantage® ERP solution.

By talking the same government-specific language, ITD and CGI quickly identified solutions to meet ITD's business needs. And by applying CGI's built-for-government AMS Advantage 3 Financial Management, Human Resources Management (HRM) and reporting software to the problem, together they achieved results.

CGI offered the federal aid billing component out-of-the-box, so ITD didn't require a lot of customizations to plug it in, which addressed their biggest challenge from a department of transportation perspective. In addition, the architecture of the event type concept, which identifies common accounting events within CGI's solution, was very similar to the transaction codes of Idaho's statewide STARS payroll system. This enabled ITD users to more easily grasp the use of the new system, reducing training time.

Another challenge focused on the lack of integration with the statewide STARS system, leaving ITD with regular manual reconciliation and data entry tasks. With AMS Advantage's service-oriented architecture (SOA) and XML-based integration standards, along with CGI's experience with the STARS system, the development of the statewide interfaces was easier to accomplish. This put the emphasis where it belongs, on the process and user experience, rather than on the individual application components.

Having been through the implementation process before, the ITD team understood the effect that customizations have on a system and themselves. Finding a way to eliminate customizations was a major goal, and with CGI, they were able to achieve this.

ITD was open minded enough to say, 'How would CGI go about doing this?' ITD worked with CGI through the solution, rather than having to customize the solution. That was really important to help deliver the desired results. By choosing carefully where to adapt the business to the system, ITD kept their focus on business-specific customizations, for example with indirect costs and with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) electronic filing.

As a result, ITD is better positioned to keep up with product upgrades and enhancements as well as the benefits of emerging technology.

The Technology

• Open standards
• n-tiered architecture
• Web-based ERP
• Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

The Results
On Monday, February 13, 2006, the Idaho Transportation Department went live with the web-based AMS Advantage 3 Financial Management, HRM and reporting software. What CGI brought was reliability and consistency. The same CGI consultants who started the project ended the project with ITD. There were CGI consultants with years of experience, not just days, on the project.

Today ITD achieves its mission through a built-for-government solution that does the following:

• ITD now uses distributed timesheet entry department-wide to all 1,800+ employees.
• Instead of standard rates, ITD now uses actual costing of payroll expenditures for federal reimbursement. This alleviates the need to prepare reconciling entries to balance to the statewide STARS system.
• Instead of manual Microsoft Office entries, ITD now tracks and maintains payment plans for outstanding receivables, fully automating the processing of delinquent receivables (dunning and collection referrals).
• With workflow and approval processing, ITD eliminated much of their manual paper processing.
• Instead of invalid chart of accounts combinations, ITD now has tighter controls of acceptable chart of account coding combinations, particularly for highway projects. This eliminates the time-consuming effort of manually identifying and correcting erroneous data.
• Instead of manual reconciliations and adjusting entries, ITD now uses an interface to automatically reconcile financial information with the statewide STARS system for payroll-related expenses.
• With CGI and AMS Advantage3, ITD introduced automated forward and backward document referencing.
• With CGI and AMS Advantage 3, ITD now has the ability to purchase off of master agreements.

Finally, thanks to their partnership with NHTSA, ITD became the first state to electronically submit NHTSA budget change and reimbursement requests. Today, other states across the country are inquiring into ITD's innovative solution.

For more information, contact CGI at 1-800-321-0267.