U.S. Coast Guard financial management : a systems approach to business process reengineering

Abstract

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is undertaking an enterprise-wide Financial Management Business Process Re-Engineering (FM BPR) effort that will transform its delivery of financial management services which support worldwide operations and mission support activities. The planned changes will include deployment of new commercial-off-the-shelf financial management software, and simultaneous changes to USCG organizational structures and FM processes. Proposed changes to the USCG FM system are intended to bring the Service into compliance with Federal standards for financial operations, while simultaneously improving delivery of financial business support to end users. This thesis applies Dr. Nancy Leveson's System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) safety methodology to perform a hazard analysis on aspects of the re-engineered (future state) business processes to help ensure the system can deliver its intended performance. Application of STPA on the USCG FM system was conducted with the aid of the Safety Hazard Analysis Tool (SafetyHAT) software released in March 2014 by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. SafetyHAT is intended to aid users in performing hazard analysis using STPA. The use of SafetyHAT for this thesis research is its first application outside of the Volpe Center and transportation domain. Recommendations for tailoring the tool to the financial management and other domains are proposed. The application of STPA on targeted aspects of the USCG FM system identified 205 causal factors for potential system hazards. Recommendations to appropriately remediate the causal factors are proposed based on systems theory principles and tools. Recommended improvements include robust feedback and communication channels illustrated using the system control diagram used to perform STPA. System dynamics modeling is also used to quantitatively illustrate the non-linear interactions that exist in the USCG FM system, and how the system design will affect its performance over time. The simulations show that if the causal factors identified using STPA are not addressed, the FM system may fail to achieve its intended performance. Other recommendations include the expanded use of system dynamic modeling to inform future design decisions for the USCG FM system, including trade-offs driven by resource limitations, as the re-engineering effort progresses.