Much focus has been given, in these newsletter pages and elsewhere, to how reformed Indian trust systems help the individual Indian trust beneficiary. But tribes too will benefit. Tribes can take advantage of OST’s Trust Beneficiary Call Center and fiduciary trust officers who are working directly with beneficiaries in each region. Tribal accounts are now managed locally by the trust officers, so a tribe has a convenient resource to get answers to account questions. Possibly the most significant change for tribes, however, is the improved and upgraded technology being installed at BIA offices across the nation.

These technology conversions will be beneficial to tribes in a number of ways. OST’s funds receivable system allows funds to get to tribes faster and more efficiently. This commercial lockbox technology allows trust receipts to be deposited safely at a central point and then automatically transfers funds to tribal accounts . Payments no longer pass between many different agency staff hands or take several days to process. As well, the updated Trust Asset and Accounting Management System being implemented at BIA offices across the nation will allow tribes to receive immediate information including:

–          Current title status;

–          The number of tracts a tribe owns;

–          The percent of ownership in each tract of land a tribe owns;

–          The number of encumbered (i.e. leased) tracts a tribe has;

–          Where each tract is located;

–          The acreage of each tract and the cumulative acreage of all tracts owned by a tribe;

–          The amount to be received through each lease;

–          The effective and expiration dates of each lease.

Tribes in BIA regions that have fully converted to the integrated technology will receive this information on their monthly account statements. This is a vast improvement. In the past it could take weeks or months to obtain this information because many different people had to gather it from a variety of sources, and information in the older title and accounting systems might not have been current at the time of the request. The Department of the Interior intends these improvements to be helpful to tribal budgeting, leasing, economic development and other endeavors.