Highlights

Fraud Audio Conference Set
Earn 2 CPE hours by participating in an audio conference titled, “Key Reasons Why the Breakdown of Internal Controls Contribute to Fraud,” set for 2 to 3:50 p.m. EST March 2. Receive a discounted rate for your site by registering before Feb. 25.

AGA Advertising Opportunities!
Advertise in AGA's electronic newsletters—TOPICS and AGA Today! Get maximum exposure and build your brand. Click here for all the information you need to run your ad! Or you can contact AGA's Director of Communications,
Marie Force

PDC 2005 Registration Now Open
Join us in sunny Orlando for the government financial management education event of the year! AGA invites you to attend its 54th Annual Professional Development Conference & Exposition, to be held July 10 – 13, 2005, in Orlando, FL. PDC 2005 promises to be an excellent learning and networking opportunity for government financial managers and accountability professionals. Education sessions will provide technical training, useful information on emerging trends, tools to help you become more effective and lessons from the best in the business. In addition to an outstanding technical program, we have arranged a number of social events to ensure an exceptional conference experience. You can register online or print the registration form to register by fax or mail. Advance registration discounts apply to all forms received before June 10, 2005. Click here to register.

Deadline Extended!
Computer-Based Auditing Tools & Techniques—A Special Supplement to the Summer 2005 Journal
Auditors everywhere rely on a variety of computer-based tools and techniques to get their jobs done. The supplement will be bagged and mailed along with the Summer 2005 Annual Technology issue of the Journal of Government Financial Management. Reserve your space by March 1! Click here for more information.

Studying for CGFM Examinations?
Be sure to order one of the study guides available for CGFM Exams 2 and 3 to help you prepare. Click here to learn more.

Conference Set for Purchase and Travel Card Managers
The Eighth National Cards on Campus conference is an event built by higher education, for higher education. We’ve planned this event around all skill levels. Card Programs from beginning to advanced. PDG has brought together the top experts to present to Colleges and Universities about how to take your program to the next level. If you’re just starting your program, avoid re-inventing the wheel, and learn from schools that have already made their programs successful! Topics include: Audits, Benchmarking, Fraud Prevention, Training, Marketing your program and much more! If you’re a College or University with a P-Card program, your school cannot afford to miss the 2005 Cards on Campus Conference in beautiful, sunny southern California. Click here for more information.

February 22, 2005 • News from the Profession

AGA Today is brought to you by AGA Corporate Partner

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Governors Converge on Capital to Discuss Future of Medicaid
Congress, governors and the secretary of health and human services began negotiations Wednesday on the future of Medicaid, with a view to making fundamental changes in the program to control its costs. Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat who is chairman of the National Governors Association, said the Washington, D.C. meeting was "the beginning of a process" that could fundamentally alter Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for more than 50 million people with low incomes. Medicaid spending has shot up 63 percent in the last five years, so that federal and state outlays together now total more than $300 billion a year. With no change in current law, the Congressional Budget Office says, the cost will grow an average of 7.7 percent a year in the next decade. Governors desperately want to slow the growth of Medicaid, which they say is eating up state tax revenues they want to use for education. Governors fear that Congress, in an effort to reduce the federal deficit, will limit federal Medicaid spending without relieving the states of any of their legal or financial obligations. "We don't want to see the federal government simply shift costs to the states," Warner said. —Robert Pear, The New York Times. Click here to read the entire article.

AGA Today is brought to you by UMUC
Fit an accounting/finance graduate degree into your busy life. With flexible graduate degree and certificate programs offered online and in class, University of Maryland University College, an accredited university, offers lots of ways to get the degree you need. No GRE or GMAT required for master's programs. Call 800-888-UMUC or visit www.umuc.edu/aga for information.

USPS Voluntarily Complying with Sarbanes-Oxley
While most agencies have beefed up their internal controls since the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, none has gone as far as the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). The USPS Internal Control Group, which was created as part of the 2002 Transformation Plan, is responsible for the agency’s voluntary compliance to Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires documenting and testing internal controls. To prioritize the Internal Control Group’s focus, manager Peg Weir ranked programs according to a risk assessment model based on their dollar value. Among the potential trouble areas identified were bulk mail, stamp retail, money order processes and contracts with the private sector. Some improvements to date: At their peak, paper and electronic systems that track the eFleet card, a credit card that links to a Web-based tracking system, were off by almost $11.7 million out of a total of $63 million in expenditures. Weir's group helped bring that number down to $1.3 million. Weir even worked internal controls into employees’ Blackberrys, which will require passwords and will time out automatically when the new gadgets are rolled out next month. —Kimberly Palmer, Government Executive. Click here to read the entire article.

States Balk at Drivers’ License Bill as it Heads to U.S. Senate
It will be impossible for states to comply with stringent mandates for state-issued drivers’ licenses specified in a bill aiming to curb illegal immigration that cleared the U.S. House of Representatives last week, state officials say. The bill, which experts predict will encounter resistance in the U.S. Senate, would preempt plans for more flexible drivers’ license standards included in the landmark legislation overhauling intelligence agencies that Congress passed late last year. It explicitly bars federal agencies from accepting as valid forms of identification licenses issued in states that grant them to illegal immigrants. Ten states—Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin—currently do not require license applicants to show they are lawfully present in the United States, in effect granting licenses to illegal immigrants. But Cheye Calvo, who tracks the issue for the National Conference of State Legislatures, criticized a requirement that states verify all documents, such as birth certificates, used to obtain a license and said the bill shifts to states the responsibility to enforce immigration law. He said already overburdened state motor vehicle divisions are ill-equipped to do this. “It’s actually telling states to do things that are simply impossible, that are not doable” Calvo said, adding, “Immigration status is a federal responsibility. It should not be our job to confirm a status bestowed by federal officials.” —Kathleen Hunter, Stateline.org. Click here to read the entire article.

AGA Today is brought to you by the
U.S. Coast Guard
Position available at U. S. Coast Guard Headquarters
in Washington D.C.
Supervisory Accountant, GS-0510-15
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Serve as senior technical expert for numerous Coast Guard wide initiatives. This includes general management, coordination and oversight of CFO Act audit remediation activities, development and implementation of service-wide financial Internal Control Program and oversight of the Coast Guard's Personal Property Program. Supervise a professional staff performing work at the GS-11-GS-14 level. Desirable experience include operational accounting and audit in a Federal environment and professional accounting certification. Complete information is available on USAJOBS or https:// jobs1.quickhire.com/scripts/uscg.exe. Job announcement number 05-0429-HQGH-D1 (non-status applicants) and 05-0429-HQGM-M1 (status/current Federal employees). EOE

Author Makes Case for Digital Revolution in Government
Before technology can transform the federal government, the government must become less hierarchical and agency-centered. "I think that conventional wisdom is wrong," William Eggers, the author of the new book Government 2.0, said at a Cato Institute forum in Washington, D.C. Tuesday. Government must reshape its way of thinking about education and regulation, he said, and it must remake itself into a networked, citizen-centered and transparent structure. In his book, Eggers argues that antiquated hierarchies cannot meet today's challenges. He envisions a network-centric government where information is shared across agencies in order to streamline processes, foster efficiency, improve services and ease access to information. Under that model, private enterprises will find different ways to package government information, he said. For example, Eggers said that Earth 911, a private organization that provides timely environmental data and lists government resources, "succeeded where other government agencies failed." —Danielle Belopotosky, National Journal’s Technology Daily. Click here to read the entire article.

Salary Survey Says Certifications Pay
Accountants with at least one professional certification—whether it be a CPA license or an MBA—reported substantially higher salaries than accountants with no certification, according to the new SmartPros Salary Survey just released. Nearly 2,500 respondents answered the nine-question online survey between September and December 2004. Respondents included a wide range of accounting professionals, but the majority reported their professional title as staff accountant (34 percent), director/manager (20 percent) or CFO/controller (12 percent). By area of practice alone, and without considering certifications, accounting professionals in regional public accounting averaged $61,493; in national public accounting, $58,959; and in local public accounting, $58,391. Government accounting salaries averaged $56,036. In addition, the survey found that accounting professionals with both a CPA license and another certification made more than twice the salary ($87,396) as those without a certification ($43,510). —SmartPros. Click here to read the entire article.

Senator Urges Go-Slow Approach to Personnel Reform
A key Republican senator urged the Bush administration Thursday to wait for results from the new Homeland Security and Defense department personnel systems before spreading the reforms to the rest of the federal government. In late January, the Office of Management and Budget said it would seek to overhaul personnel rules in all federal agencies. Clay Johnson, OMB deputy director for management, acknowledged that the plan—which was included in the fiscal 2006 budget proposal—will require congressional approval. Federal personnel officials are implementing sweeping reforms at DHS and Defense that will abolish the General Schedule pay system, restrict union bargaining rights and implement stricter disciplinary rules. "We have a difference of opinion with the administration on whether this should be cascaded out" in the short term, said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, during a hearing Thursday of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia. Voinovich is chairman of that subcommittee and would have a great deal of influence on the expansion of civil service reform to the rest of the federal government. The hearing focused on the Homeland Security personnel system. —David McGlinchey, Government Executive. Click here to read the entire article.

After Bush Leaves Office, His Budget's Costs Balloon
For President Bush, the budget he sent to Congress outlines a painful path to meeting his promise to bring down the federal budget deficit by the time he leaves office in 2009. But for the senators and governors already jockeying to succeed him, the numbers released in recent weeks add up to a budgetary landmine that could blow up just as the next president moves into the Oval Office. Even if Bush succeeds in slashing the deficit in half in four years, as he has pledged, his major policy prescriptions would leave his successor with massive financial commitments that begin rising dramatically the year he relinquishes the White House, according to an analysis of new budget figures. Bush's extensive tax cuts, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and, if it passes, his plan to redesign Social Security all balloon in cost several years from now. His plan to partially privatize Social Security, for instance, would cost a total of $79.5 billion in the last two budgets that Bush will propose as president and an additional $675 billion in the five years that follow. New Medicare figures likewise show the cost almost twice as high as originally estimated, largely because it mushrooms long after the Bush presidency. "It's almost like you've got a budget, and you've got a shadow budget coming in behind that's a whole lot more expensive," said Philip G. Joyce, professor of public policy at George Washington University. — Jonathan Weisman and Peter Baker, The Washington Post. Click here to read the entire article.

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