Finance Soldiers train at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

16th Sustainment Brigade
Courtesy Story

Date: 02.28.2014
Posted: 07.02.2014 03:41
News ID: 135067
Finance Soldiers train at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

By 1st Lt. Adam Newberry
16th Sustainment Brigade

BOSTON – Officers from the 106th Financial Management Support Unit, 16th Sustainment Brigade participated in a weeklong intensive technical training at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Feb. 24.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is the national provider for the EagleCash program. The program is a cash management tool that supports the operations under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Central Command and other global contingency sites where e-commerce systems are used extensively.

EagleCash was developed and is managed by the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Department of the Treasury. The system is a smart-card technology as a substitute for hard currency for deployed service members.

The e-commerce system is not currently trained on or used by the military in the continental U.S. at home station units and is therefore critical to ensure key personnel are trained accordingly prior to deployments.

EagleCash program manager for E-Commerce U.S. Army Financial Management Command (USAFMCOM) Tony Taylor said, “This training is to prepare Army finance Soldiers for their financial management roles and responsibilities when they deploy outside the United States where e-commerce is extensively used.”

This training covers all EagleCash, ITS.gov, OTCnet and related disbursing entries. The training is a weeklong intensive hands-on and technical background training environment which exposes students to back end processes and allows them to meet our fiscal agent partners and national providers.

“The training served as a great opportunity, as the 106th FMSU stands up their third disbursing office located at M.K. Air Base Passenger Transit Center, Romania”, said 1st Lt. Adam Newberry, deputy disbursing officer, assigned to 106th Financial Management Support Unit, Baumholder, Germany. ”Implementing this technology at no cost to the command supports our strategic objective of reducing U.S. currency in a foreign area of responsibility”

“Learning about e-commerce systems was incredibly enlightening since it revealed the depth of financial operations for both the military and civilian sectors,” said 2nd Lt Rachel Kim, disbursing agent assigned to C/106th Financial Management Support Unit at the Mihail Kogalniceanu (MK) Air Base Passenger Transit Center, Romania. “Learning the back end processes of e-commerce and meeting the national providers really helped me grasp the entire processes of banking and disbursing support”.