The Department of Finance, the State Treasurer's Office, the State Controller's Office, and the Department of General Services have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate in a partnership to serve the best interest of the state and its citizens. This partnership will optimize the business management of the state, successfully develop, implement, utilize, and maintain an integrated financial management system, as approved in the Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) Special Project Report. These four departments are known as the 'Partner Agencies'. Specifically:

• Development of FI$Cal resides with the four Partner Agencies. Additional state agencies collaboratively contributed to the proposed system requirements.
• The FI$Cal project will ensure best business practices by embracing opportunities to re-engineer the state's business processes. The state's financial and business processes will be re-engineered in the areas of budgeting, accounting, procurement, cash management, financial management, financial reporting, cost accounting, asset management, project accounting, grant management and human resources management.
• The FI$Cal project is a 'Next Generation' project. FI$Cal is incorporating nationwide best business practices and lessons learned from other states in implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) statewide system.
• Through the partnership, this 'Next Generation' project will prepare the state's systems and the state's financial management workforce to function in a significantly improved, integrated ERP environment with highly developed, transferable skills.