County tests financial solution

• By Dibya Sarkar
• Oct 12, 2001

Orange County, Fla., will be testing American Management Systems Inc.'s

upgraded financial management product to handle the government's financial

and procurement services via the Web.

The product, AMS Advantage 3.0 Financial, is the only totally Web-based

administrative solution for state and local governments in the market, said

Donna Morea, executive vice president and general manager of the Fairfax,

Va.-based company's state and local division.

The solution has been redesigned and "rearchitected," she said, to increase

efficiency in the way governments handle purchasing and the way end users

can configure the system, such as setting up accounts, automating business

rules and doing different kinds of reporting.

Rafael Mena, Orange County's development manager, said the government

plans to migrate its present applications to a more open architecture. The

county's current financial system resides on its mainframe computer, and

officials want to move it to a Web-based architecture.

The county provides bid information on its Web site now ({http://www.onetgov.net}

www.onetgov.net), but Mena said the new product would enable vendors to

enter information via the Web as well as do invoicing, something not offered

now.

He said 30 government representatives from the information technology

department and other agencies are reviewing the county's business processes.

The county government, with headquarters in downtown Orlando, has about

6,000 employees, including 150 IT workers.

Morea said the product is scalable to work in city, county and state

governments. About 240 government clients use the current AMS product. The

upgrade will be offered in December.