By Stephanie Bartlett April 24, 2025
Federal agencies are operating in an era defined by complexity. In this environment, budget pressures, workforce challenges, and rising expectations around efficiency, productivity, and accountability are reshaping how finance teams must function. The widespread economic uncertainty and rapid digital transformation also mean finance teams are looking beyond traditional finance models. Finance transformation is thus certain as agencies must be resilient and strategic while navigating disruption.
With uncertainty as the new normal, government agencies need modern solutions that enable agility, efficiency, and transparency. This post therefore explores how agencies can build financial resilience, and highlight real-world modernization examples and how these efforts impact performance and mission support.
The Challenge: Outdated Systems, Unsustainable Processes
Traditionally, many agencies are constrained by Excel and outdated legacy systems, disconnected finance processes, and inefficient analytics tools. Federal finance teams also often struggle with manual processes that are inefficient, error-prone, and increasingly unsustainable. Amid these outdated systems and unsustainable processes, agencies experience reporting and planning delays, face increased audit risks, and consume valuable staff resources and time.
To address these challenges, finance leaders are looking beyond legacy systems and spreadsheets. Agency leaders are instead implementing modern software solutions that allow agencies to adapt, evolve, and support mission success over time.
Resilient Finance: Modern Solutions
Resilience is more than process efficiency. Rather, resilience represents how well agencies can respond to volatility with confidence and precision. With uncertainty as a constant in the foreseeable future, agencies must focus on making finance a strategic partner for ensuring mission success.
Such practices will help agencies build a more adaptable operating model — one that maintains performance, continuity, and control in the face of change and disruption. To operationalize resilience, agencies need a model that does the following:
- Centralizes Data to Enhance Control: Bringing together finance and operational data reduces data fragmentation, improves accuracy, and enables confident operational decisions in real time.
- Enables Adaptive Forecasting and Scenario Resilience: Flexible planning and what-if analysis allow agencies to test responses and pivot operations when conditions change unexpectedly.
- Automates Monitoring to Reduce Disruption: Real-time reporting and dashboards help detect performance shifts early, enable course corrections sooner, and preserve process continuity in dynamic environments.
From Strategy to Execution: Modernization in Action
Today, agencies are already modernizing their systems to boost efficiency, increase transparency, and enable more informed decision-making. Below are three real-world examples.
1. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) cites an example of how they are approaching modernization in the 2024 Agency Financial Report. The agency is replacing several legacy systems and processes with a new enterprise performance management (EPM) solution: the DISA Integrated Management and Execution System (DIMES). This solution is based on the OneStream platform that supports budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, and data quality management on a single platform.
DISA initially implemented budget execution to support spend planning and the agency plans to expand the use of the platform for budget formulation and reporting. This approach promises increased automation, transparency, and better financial information control for managers and leaders.
2. The Army Financial Management (FM) Community
The FM Community has also made strides in improving financial management processes and systems. For instance, one significant accomplishment includes considerable advancements in improving the Planning, Programming, Budget, and Execution (PPBE) process. The community did so through the ongoing implementation of the Resource Manager’s Workspace (RMW) system.
The RMW system has already gone live with capabilities that enable transmitting the Spend Plan across Army Commands (ACOMs). By streamlining PPBE across the Army, the system will enhance efficiency, improve auditability, and reduce reliance on outdated tools.
3. A Combat Support Agency
In a combat support agency, leaders sought to improve its finance processes and save time, money, and manpower in budgeting activities. Those efforts included creating mandatory yearly budget exhibits for the government. Before modernizing, the agency’s reliance on Excel and manual tasks posed risks and inefficiencies. Implementing OneStream, however, allowed the agency to gain significant improvements.
OneStream automated, standardized, and linked the PPBE and performance management processes — maximizing time and information for better analysis. The agency can now create government-required financial exhibits with ease and maintain data at the necessary level of detail to support the mission. Reporting that once took weeks now takes minutes, and data quality has significantly improved thanks to reduced manual intervention. Today, the agency continues to enhance finance processes and insights, including using OneStream for workforce management.
The above use cases reflect how agencies are using OneStream to transform finance processes from reactive into strategic drivers of the organization. By leveraging a single platform, agencies are building a structured, responsive, and integrated finance solution to empower their finance teams for the future.
OneStream for Government Agencies
OneStream is a modern, cloud-based financial management solution that replaces outdated legacy systems. As the only finance platform with both FedRAMP High and DoD IL4 certifications, OneStream ensures the highest security and compliance while supporting mission-critical financial efforts.
OneStream’s modern finance platform is built to help federal government agencies gain agility and increase transparency. With OneStream, agencies can accelerate and simplify back-office processes across the budget and finance offices.
The Path Forward
In today’s uncertainty, agencies need resilient, adaptable finance capabilities to support mission success. Modernizing finance processes and leveraging the right technology can help federal agencies overcome the current challenges, increase efficiency, and achieve greater transparency and accountability. At OneStream, we are committed to providing finance leaders across the government sector with the technology they need to streamline operations, enhance transparency, and improve resiliency.
Ready to transform your agency to be more resilient? Explore how OneStream can help your agency strengthen its financial management processes and decision-making in an unpredictable world.
