financial management

My colleague, Carl Moravitz, used to be the budget director for several major federal agencies.  He pulled together a brief slide deck explaining what the Continuing Resolution means.  Agencies face significant uncertainty, and it may not end when the current Continuing Resolution expires on March 4th.

Here's Carl's explanation.

Improving the cost, quality, and performance of financial management operations and systems is one of the Obama’s administration’s top management priorities. While the financial management community has made significant progress over the years, it continues to face challenges in meeting some of the basic standards for accounting and reporting.

I originally had my doubts about the statutory provision in the stimulus bill that created something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.  I was concerned that it was going to be a huge “gotcha” machine.  But it looks like its chairman, Earl Devaney, has created the foundation for modernizing the CFO Act of 1990 in the way he created a website tracking Recovery Act spending, Recovery.gov.

The experience of implementing the Recovery Act’s financial reporting website sent a message to the financial management community in Washington.  OMB controller Danny Werfel tells the story of how the web version of the 2009 financial statement of one large agency (that has more than 400 financial management staff) only had 400 visits.  This contrast

If a tree falls in a forest, did it make a sound?

The November 15^th release of federal department and agency annual performance and accountability reports went largely un-noticed. Not a mention in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post (even its Federal Page).