Department of Administration officials were in the hot seat today during a three hour oversight hearing. The focus of Monday's hearing was to get an update on the implementation of the Government of Guam’s new financial management information system.

The $30-million investment, the FMIS aims to modernize the Government of Guam’s infrastructure from the AS400 system.

Also noted was how some employees were having some difficulty during training and use of the FMIS system.

Frank Lujan is GovGuam's Chief Technology Officer and he said, “It’s important to note these are common hurdles.encountered during a large-scale system implementation. The growing pains we're experiencing are temporary setbacks on the path to a more robust financial management system. It is a monumental challenge but achievable if we all work together.”

DOA’s Edward Birn looked at the whole transition optimistically.

“We also have many comments about oh this is going to save me time or this process is much better than the previous process. Once people have gotten a little more used to dealing with issues paperlessly, they obviously see the advantages. You get an instant response. The system responds to you, the paper doesn’t,” said Birn.

Lawmakers present were all in agreement that oversight hearings with doa need to happen more frequently as many of the decisions the agency has made in the roll out of the FMIS, are ones they are just hearing about the for the first time.