State has taken appropriate steps in transition to new financial system, but risks remain, audit finds

Each month, Washington relies on the aging Agency Financial Reporting System to process $4.3 billion in payments. In less than a year, the state plans to move to a new administrative system, a necessary but immensely complex information technology project affecting more than 100 agencies.

The project is overseen by the One Washington program, which chose Workday, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system, to modernize the state's administrative systems.

Today, the Office of the Washington State Auditor published a performance audit examining how One Washington has planned for the move to this new system, including training agencies for the transition and ensuring the system can produce accurate and reliable financial statements.

One Washington has followed, or plans to follow, several leading practices for successfully transferring financial data to the new system, the audit found. The program has also taken several steps the help agencies prepare for the transition to Workday.

However, significant risks remain, including the need to train agency staff on the new system and scheduling that training when staff will already be busy with year-end fiscal activities like reconciling accounts. The threat of further delays and One Washington’s as-yet unfinished contingency plans for severe complications could affect the overall success of the new financial reporting system.

The audit includes recommendations to help One Washington mitigate these risks and make a successful transition to Workday. And, because the project is in progress, auditors shared findings with One Washington as the audit progressed, allowing administrators to make adjustments as soon as possible.

“We hope this performance audit will help Washington succeed in adopting the new system, so its agencies can continue to deliver important services efficiently and with the same level of transparency the public enjoys today,” said State Auditor Pat McCarthy in the report.

The full report and summary materials can be found here: One Washington: Opportunities to strengthen plans for producing reliable financial statements.