Scott Air Force Base, Ill. – The Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS) reached its second major milestone in less than eight months with the selection of a systems integrator. An announcement Feb. 6 by the Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., named Accenture LLP, Reston, Va., the recipient of a $79.5 million, firm-fixed price task order for systems integration support to configure, deploy, and conduct training for the DEAMS program. The previous major milestone was the $22.7 million contract to Oracle Corporation for commercial-off-the-shelf software announced in June 2005.

Under this contract, Accenture will oversee the application of the Oracle financial management software suite to integrate and automate many existing Department of Defense (DoD) financial management activities.

Program managers were pleased to receive the long-awaited news of the System Integrator's selection.

"This announcement marks the beginning of the most exciting phase in the program's development," said DEAMS Functional Manager John Senn. "We expect to make great strides toward the ultimate goal of more reliable, accurate and timely financial data for the Nation's warfighters."

Selection of the systems integrator clears the way for the next step which will be confirming requirements against the Oracle software package. The DEAMS functional management team will then initiate further system development. During this phase, the team will build interfaces and reports, configure the software and prepare for the testing phase. Once the formal four-to-six month testing process begins, change management activities will be instituted to prepare DEAMS stakeholders to use the new system.

The program will be implemented through an incremental development approach with versions that leverage commercial “best practices” to reengineer business processes at U.S. Transportation Command and other organizations.

The first increment of DEAMS implementation, Version 1.1, a technology demonstration to be conducted here beginning in October 2007, will include USTRANSCOM, Air Mobility Command (AMC) and Air Force tenant commands on the base. Version 1.2 will include the remainder of the USTRANSCOM components, the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command, the U.S. Army’s Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command and the AMC bases.

The DEAMS was launched in August 2003 as an initiative under the DoD's Business Management Modernization Program, now part of the Business Transformation Agency. The DEAMS mission is to reengineer financial management activities in selected DoD organizations using a unified enterprise architecture, and standardized business rules and processes.

Further information on DEAMS can be found at http://deams.transcom.mil