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DOA: GFMIS rollout reducing manual work but migration and vendor costs remain major hurdles
Summary
Department of Administration officials said the Guam Financial Management Information System (GFMIS) has improved financial monitoring and payroll processing but requires continued data cleansing, vendor change orders and additional upgrades; the GFMIS contract moves from higher implementation payments to lower maintenance costs in 2026.
Department of Administration officials told the finance committee on June 19 that the new Guam Financial Management Information System (GFMIS) has enabled monthly budget-versus-actual reporting and faster payroll processing, but the migration of legacy accounts and additional vendor work remain active issues.
Theresa Rivers, DOA chief financial officer, said DOA started issuing the new budget-versus-actual reports in January and has been sending monthly updates to agency directors to improve cash management and invoice processing. Rivers said DOA has asked agencies for feedback and is raising service requests to fix system issues discovered by users.
Director Edward Byrne said the GFMIS contract was structured with higher payments in the early implementation years and will decline as the vendor's heavy implementation work ends. Byrne noted a $7,000,001 contract payment in 2025 that drops to $3,876,005.75 in the 2026 request. He also confirmed the contract value reported publicly is approximately $31,000,000 for the overall program.
Migration work remains substantial. Rivers told the committee the data cleanse and migration involved "close to 5,000 accounts with large balances," and technical mapping of those accounts continues to generate service requests and corrective work.
DOA said the system has already reduced manual work: Rivers described a micro-encoded check process for tax refunds implemented with the Department of Revenue and Taxation that cuts manual handling; Byrne said DOA now averages a 3-to-4-day turnaround to print and mail refunds after receiving processed tax information.
DOA also reported progress on payroll stabilization and deductions processing and said it is still migrating a small number of agencies to the new payroll work flow. Byrne said the new FMIS is cloud-based and does not rely on the legacy AS/400 for day-to-day operations, though some legacy interfaces remain (notably the revenue system) and DOA is evaluating upgrade proposals.
DOA told the committee it has requested additional proposals for revenue-system upgrades and may seek separate authorizations later. Committee members pressed for continued monitoring of contract costs and asked DOA to provide benchmarks and demonstrations to show performance improvements.
No votes or final decisions about additional GFMIS funding were taken during the hearing.
