What is FMS?

[Steve]

Google tells me the following regarding FMS:

The Veterans Affairs’ Financial Management System (FMS) is a standardized, VA wide system that interfaces externally with the Department of the Treasury, the General Service Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Defense Logistics Agency, and various commercial vendors and banks for electronic billing and payment purposes. It is VA’s core financial management system that interfaces internally with the Integrated Funds Control Point Activity (IFCAP) Accounts Receivable system and other subsystems such as Integrated Billing.

Is it part of VistA?  What is the difference between a system and a subsystem?  Where is a reference which gives more detail about it?

Thanks, Steve

[David Whitten]

I think FMS is Cobol code running on the VA's Austin Automation Center.

To my knowledge, no one has put in a FoIA request for that code.

Only in the broadest of definitions would it be considered part of VistA.

--
--
http://groups.google.com/group/Hardhats
To unsubscribe, send email to Hardhats+u...@googlegroups.com

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hardhats" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to hardhats+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Steven McPhelan]

VistA consists of 150 or so modules.  These modules are tightly integrated.  Although some modules may be run "stand alone" with minimal setup and configuration of the other modules, those are exceptions.  So VistA is really ONE application with many parts which are required.  Many implementations of VistA outside of the VA may only use 20-50 of those modules.  For example most outpatient practices do not have need of the Surgery package.  CPRS and TIU can run without issues even if the Surgery package is not properly configured and setup.  But Surgery is a part of VistA.

Other EHRs may be built as separate modules (standalone) and interfaced to create a single EHR.  These would be single, integrated EHR applications with many individual applications as components.

In your example, it calls IFCAP a subsystem.  VistA-ese call subsystems like IFCAP modules or packages.  If one uses the term subsystem, does that imply it may be possible to run the subsystem in stand alone mode?  It may or may not but at the least it is ambiguous.  For example, I can run an engine totally dissociated from the rest of the car.  I think everyone would agree that the engine subsystem is not a car.  Using the terms like package or module usually implies a component of a whole which cannot be run in stand alone mode.  But that could be ambiguous also.  Intersystems Cache allows one to create, import, export packages.  But Cache itself is not dependent upon these user defined packages.  But the reverse is not true.  The package does require Cache.

Unfortunately, I do not believe there are commonly held standard definitions for system, subsystem, package, or module.  Those definitions usually are based upon one's experience.  In the end the definitions of those terms end up being context sensitive.

Steve

[US Supreme Court 1980]: Stone vs. Graham which outlawed the Ten Commandments in our public schools: "If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments were to have any effect at all, it would be to induce school children to read them. And if they read them, meditated upon them, and perhaps venerated and observed them, this is not a permissible objective."

[Steven McPhelan]

I did not see David's response which is correct.  FMS is a separate system from VistA which gets data from other systems like VistA as well as other sources.  The usefulness of FMS outside of the VA is nil as it is highly tuned to the VA environment.  FMS could not be used realistically in other federal agencies let alone in a non-federal environment.  There are federal regulations and Congressional Acts which dictate requirements that only apply to the VA.

Steve