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NOAA Finance Office

TO: NOAA Partners and Stakeholders

SUBJECT: BAS Blackout Period: Message for NOAA External Partners

DATE: September 12, 2023

NOAA is working on a transition to the Business Applications Solution (BAS). BAS is a new set of financial, procurement, property management, and financial assistance software applications, which will replace our legacy systems that have been in place for nearly 25 years. Once NOAA is fully transitioned to BAS, we expect to see benefits such as improved financial management reporting, simplified and standardized business processes, increased automation, and overall greater transparency. The transition to BAS is scheduled to begin starting on October 1, 2023.

With this transition, it will be necessary to have a “blackout” period for the purposes of data conversion, establishing connectivity between systems, and more. The blackout period will occur from 10/1/2023 to 10/25/2023. During the blackout period, NOAA will not have access to the financial systems to conduct typical business, and will adopt a “mission essential” stance for allowing transactions due to the manual processes required during this time.

To minimize the potential hardships for partners during this transition, NOAA began informing partners with a financial interest in NOAA business to prepare for the blackout. During the blackout period, partners can expect the following:

Invoices: Vendors continue to submit invoices for Fiscal Year 2023 before September 8, 2023. All invoices received after September 8, 2023 will be processed for payment when the BAS financial systems become available, including any late payments owed to vendors. Please continue to submit invoices using the current process during the blackout period, after which invoices must be submitted using the new Invoice Processing Platform (IPP).

Contracts: Work may continue under funded contracts. Mission essential orders may be approved during the blackout period. Non-essential orders may be approved after the blackout period.

Grants and Cooperative Agreements: Work may continue under funded grant and cooperative agreements. Mission essential orders may be approved during the blackout period. Non-essential orders may be approved after the blackout period.

IGT Buy/Sell Transactions with Federal partners: Work may continue under funded Orders. Mission essential orders may be approved during the blackout period via “paper” versions of the 7600B. No orders may be approved in G-Invoicing during the blackout as this may cause Orders to get out of sync between G-Invoicing and Oracle EBS.  Intra-Governmental Payment and Collection (IPAC) will be used to transfer funds to interagency partners for work NOAA approves as mission essential. 

NOAA values the services provided by our partners and will do everything possible to process orders and invoices timely before and after the blackout despite this major “once in a quarter century” system change.