Throughout its history, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, has sought to promote sustainable homeownership, support community development, and access to affordable housing. It has also become evident that government best serves the taxpayer when it is performing well and producing sound results. Over the last couple of years, HUD has taken many steps to improve its management and performance in fulfilling its mission.

Transparency is one of the current buzzwords, which is notnecessarily bad. A keystone of democracy is accountabilityand transparency, i.e., providing information is one way forthe government to be accountable. Since no one wants tolook bad, transparency can be a major impetus for programimprovement.

The most effective way to access an agency’s accountability is with information about the performance of its programs: whether and how the agency is managing its resources to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse; the important amounts in its financial statements, their significance to the agency’s programs, whether and why these amounts have changed from the prior year; and conditions, trends, events, both existing today or likely in the future.