MEETING MINUTES
FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF
STATE AGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTORS
DATE
TIME
LOCATION
Agencies
Represented
July 29, 2016
8:30 – 10:00 a.m.
Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles, Auditorium
Agency for Health Care Administration, Agriculture and Consumer Services,
Auditor General, Children and Families, Citrus, Corrections, Economic
Opportunity, Emergency Management, Environmental Protection, Financial
Services, Highway Safety, Justice Administrative Commission, Legal Affairs,
Lottery, Management Services, Military Affairs, Revenue, State, State Courts,
Transportation, and Veterans Affairs
Opening Remarks – Christina Smith, Chair
• The meeting began with the introduction of attendees both on the phone and present at the
Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (HSMV).
Department of Financial Services (DFS)
Florida PALM Update – Julian Gotreaux (see handout)
• The Florida PALM team welcomes both Joanne Lane, the new Business Process Standardization
(BPS) Procurement to Payment Co-Lead, and Carolyn Hicks, the new Organizational Change
Management (OCM) Manager.
On July 25, the Business Case Team sent an email to the Administrative Services Directors and
Chief Information Officers requesting the completion of an Agency Systems Functionality Profile
for their agency’s business systems that interface with FLAIR and/or CMS by August 5. Once the
responses are received, if further information is needed, the team will reach out to agencies
individually to set up interviews.
Department of Management Services (DMS), Division of Retirement
State Retirement Audits – Lindy Still
• The DMS Division of Retirement is going to begin auditing state agencies for retirement
compliance as required by statute. The purpose is to ensure all persons and monies in the
Florida Retirement System (FRS) are being accurately reported. Each audit will begin with an
engagement letter which includes preliminary questions and a request for information; the
agency’s Human Resources and Personnel offices are often included in the audit process. Typical
findings in audits of this nature include unreported employees, unreported wages and, the
biggest issue to date, incorrectly reported workers’ compensation.
In the upcoming months, Liz Stevens will be conducting a webinar on correctly reporting
workers’ compensation. It is very important that agencies stay on top of workers’ compensation
reporting as incorrect reporting comes with delinquency fees.
For more information, visit the Division of Retirement website or call Lindy Still at
(850) 414-6354.
o Question: When will the webinar be and how will we know when it is offered?
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MEETING MINUTES
FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF
STATE AGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTORS
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 Answer: The webinar should be held in the next month or two and it will be sent
to the retirement coordinator at each department. Everyone is encouraged to
watch.
 NOTE: It was requested that notification of the webinar also be sent to all
Administrative Services Directors.
Question: Does the Division of Retirement audit all FRS participants or just agencies?
 Answer: Everyone.
DMS, Division of State Purchasing
MyFloridaMarketPlace (MFMP) Punchout Catalog Audit – Judson Freeman (see handout)
• The punchout catalog audit is a new MFMP feature that provides an automated tool for DMS
State Purchasing contract managers to audit items purchased from an enabled supplier’s
punchout catalog. The feature uses an algorithm to look at line items and ensure that the cost
presented by a supplier is equal to or less than that which is listed on the MFMP price sheet.
Requesters are notified when changes are made or discrepancies are found, be it price, SKU
number, etc., which ensures cost savings and improves visibility for the whole process. DMS has
created job aids and a new webpage for this function.
o Question: What triggered this audit system? Was MFMP finding a great deal of
discrepancies?
 Answer: No. This system is a simple automation and a standard best practice in
place by other states.
o Question: The Department of Transportation ran into a problem with a company who
claims that MFMP is not updating their prices fast enough to keep up with the
company’s “sales” and availability.
 Answer: MFMP is not familiar with this particular incident but that is part of the
process, seeing what items are in high demand that are not part of the
punchout audit.
DFS, Division of Treasury
Concentration Account Conversion – Tanner Collins
• Over the past two weeks, Treasury has been working with the pilot agencies to make banking
with Wells Fargo available. Agency conversions begin August 2 and will occur in waves for the
next six weeks. If your agency utilizes scanners, the most common mistake being seen are when
checks are input using the scanner. The scanners do no read the magnetic ink character
recognition (MICR) line, so the 10-digit deposit number must be manually keyed in. However,
the deposit number only has to be keyed in once (even if you are depositing 1,000 checks). If
this step is not done, Treasury has to go in and manually input the number which slows down
the process. It has been requested of Wells Fargo that the ability to read the MICR lines be
added as a system enhancement.
Training will be taking place for agencies in the next few weeks if you use scanners for checks.
Extensive training is planned for each agency about a week before the agency converts.
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MEETING MINUTES
FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF
STATE AGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTORS
Please note that Wells Fargo does not require Automated Clearing House enrollment forms –
these are only required by the vendor. Unless the vendor is asking for this form, Treasury does
not need it to process transactions.
o Question: Were there any issues with the federal drawdowns?
 Answer: Treasury had to wait until the system was ready to receive payments.
We have heard the ACHs can take anywhere from two weeks to a month to six
weeks to change bank account information. It really depends on the Fed office
and what their procedures are.
E-Payments
• Treasury is still working on a sole source justification to see if an RPO is possible for e-payments.
The caveat is, does it have to be executed by September or can they get it pushed back to
March? Treasury will provide more guidance as more information becomes available and
hopefully the only thing agencies would need to do is sign a new participation agreement.
o Question: What happens if an agency deposits to Wells Fargo before we get the account
information to the Feds?
 Answer: We do not want agencies depositing into their Wells Fargo accounts
until their go-live date. But, if a deposit does hit before then it will still go
through for MOST agencies.
DFS, Division of Accounting & Auditing Update – Christina Smith (see handout)
Hot Topics
• There are still a lot of questions related to the new travel restrictions. It has been a topic for
over two months now. There was a request for a PCard memo and an FAQ list. The memo has
gone out and we are still working on the FAQ list. It seems some people got confused on the
PCard memo because it did not restate things already laid out in the first memo. Please look at
all memos related to travel.
o Question: When we are asked to travel out of state, there is very little chance in many
places of getting a room for under $150 (in DC for example). What do we do in this
situation?
 Answer: This seems to be an issue for many agencies. We don’t want to
interfere with the agency’s ability to do their job, but it is the law. However, if
YOUR AGENCY is not the one coordinating the meeting, conference, or
convention, the rate restriction does not apply. Note: You will still have to justify
that it is mission critical.
o Question: The Department of Fish and Wildlife has to do a significant amount of work in
the Keys and the closest place they can find hotels that meet the requirement are in
Marathon – 2 hours away. How should this be handled? Do we deny the travel? Do we
let it go through and simply document the price calculations?
 Answer: First, is the travel for a meeting or is the travel to perform the agency’s
core duties? If it is for the agency’s core duties, the restriction should not apply.
If the travel is for a meeting, Christina would like for you to document the price
calculations to show that the back and forth travel is not more cost effective
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MEETING MINUTES
FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF
STATE AGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTORS
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than simply paying a bit more for a hotel. Christina will keep a file to show times
when the law does NOT make it more cost effective.
Question: So wait, it’s internal travel for core duties but it doesn’t have to stay under
the price restriction?
 A: Correct, the price restriction is for meetings, conferences, or conventions.
Remember, you still need to provide justification that the travel is mission
critical or is to perform a function for public safety during a state of emergency.
Question: If our agency doesn’t want to delay vouchers during the interim of deciding
what is or is not a meeting, can we go ahead and just go forward with approving the
travel?
 Answer: Be careful and be conservative – in most areas you should be able to
find lodging which meets the price cap.
•
Travel Audit – The travel audit is intended to be a post-audit. The auditing process teams will be
reaching out to agencies for the audit documentation.
o Question: Level 8s are approving travel charges without documentation, because if they
waited for documentation they would never meet their deadlines from the date of
when travel occurred. How can we handle this?
 Answer: Christina and Mark Merry will look into this.
•
DFS is currently undergoing an audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS is looking for
situations where employees are getting both W2s and 1099s. If there are findings, they will be
addressed as needed. Some situations are justifiable. At the backend, any takeaways will be
shared. DFS greatly appreciates the cooperation from the agencies.
o Question: So we don’t know for sure that any of the employees overlapped with their
time as a vendor?
 A: Correct. Nineteen agencies were impacted and they have all been contacted.
We do not know if the audit was comprehensive or a sample, so it does not
mean that your agency did not have any occurrences, just that they did not
show up for this audit.
•
Yearend deadlines – Christina is debating putting the yearend data out on the web. DFS has to
run like crazy when, on June 30, there are negative cash balances. The last payroll of the year
had a high volume of occurrences. We are going to look closer at the occurrences and see what
may have caused this. Running a supplemental Payroll on June 29th definitely threw some
agencies out of balance – this is something that DFS needs to adjust and get out sooner so that
the timing is not occurring on the last day of the month.
OPB is getting negatives in their certified file. Agencies should be running reports to make sure
all of the negatives are cleared out. DFS should be going behind the agencies to make sure this is
not occurring.
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MEETING MINUTES
FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF
STATE AGENCY ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIRECTORS
Open Floor
•
The Department of Military Affairs (DMA) has some questions regarding asset management. If
there are any agencies with strong property/asset management who would be willing to
volunteer as a contact to help DMA, please send Christina an email.
Note: Christina will also follow up with looking to hold a group meeting regarding inventory.
•
DFS would like to hold a workshop regarding recruitment and retention. Currently, we are
looking at dates in September and looking how that works with keynote speaker availability. DFS
is still accepting topics for the workshop.
•
FSLA Implementation – DFS Accounting & Auditing is looking at switching to overtime, though
our managers do not currently have the experience to manage it. Christina has already asked for
training for her managers. Right now a big consideration is how do we keep overtime pay from
breaking the bank from the backend?
o It has been suggested that DFS run some reports to see when the most overtime occurs
and then look into why it happens and how it could possibly be avoided.
Adjourn – 10:00 a.m.
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