Clarisse Roquemore
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

The state comptroller's vision for the future of Texas government aligns with our public. We want a system that is as strong, resilient, and forward thinking as our taxpayers and our businesses are.

My name is Clarisse Roquemore. I'm the Director of Fiscal Management at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. The primary driver for our transformation is that our accounting and payment processing systems were implemented in 1993 and 1989, respectively.

And, although elegant in their simplicity, the skill set required to keep these systems running is in diminishing supply.

From a practical standpoint, we really wanted to move away from paper-based systems. We wanted to move away from batch processing. We really wanted to implement a system that was robust enough to handle the multiple transactions and all the varieties of program purposes of well over 200 state agencies and institutions of higher education.

The breadth of this undertaking, that we're replacing a system that is well over 30 years old, required a partnership with somebody who we felt we could work with day in and day out for, you know, well over 10 years as we sort of realize our broader future vision.

We also knew that we wanted to partner with somebody who understood and respected that we, as government practitioners, had certain business processes in place because we know how to run the state of Texas best.

Texas chose to partner with CGI because CGI exhibited a level of curiosity that we weren't used to seeing from other vendors and the vendor landscape. They asked us questions and it really felt like they listened. And so CGI really met us where we were at. They showed up with, you know, governmental accounting professionals and budget and policy wonks. And frankly, they just got it.

Happy 50th anniversary CGI. I hope you have 50 more.