Highlights
CPE
Opportunities Organized by Region
PDC 2004: A Great Success!
View the 2004 PDC Photo Gallery!
AGA
Newsletter Summer Schedule
AGA newsletters will follow the
schedule below in August:
August 2: TOPICS (Input
Due July 28)
August 16: AGA
Today
August 30: Resume normal weekly
schedule, beginning with TOPICS.
Input for TOPICS is due the Wednesday before each issue
date. Please contact Marie Force,
director of communications, with any questions you may have. Have a
safe and enjoyable summer!
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
The Value Proposition of Internal Auditing in
Government
Wednesday,
July 21, 2004
2 CPE Hours
An AGA/NASACT Training Audio Conference
This audio conference discusses the roles and responsibilities of
internal auditors and the value that the internal audit function
provides to organizations. You will also be given an opportunity
to ask questions and share experiences during the audio conference. Click here to learn more.
CGFM Exam 3 Study Guide Now
Available!
Be sure to order the new Study Guide for CGFM Exam 3:
Governmental Financial Management and Control to help in your
preparation for the examination. Click
here to learn more.
Bad Communication Behind Many Executives' Biggest
Mistakes
Nobody’s perfect, including the boss. Executives polled recently
acknowledged making a number of mistakes, from not recognizing staff
accomplishments to overworking their teams. While the examples were
diverse, the most frequently cited issue was lack of communication,
which was at the root of 20 percent of the errors. The survey was
developed by Accountemps and conducted by an independent research firm
and includes responses from 150 executives—including those from
human resources, finance and marketing departments—with the
nation’s 1,000 largest companies. Executives were asked,
"What is the biggest mistake you have ever made as a boss?"
Withholding praise was a problem cited by many: "I didn’t
give recognition to someone who turned out to be one of my best
employees and soon lost her." "I didn’t give credit
when it was due to individuals who made major contributions."
"I failed to acknowledge someone who needed to be rewarded. I have
regretted that for years." While not recognizing positive
contributions was a common mistake, letting poor performance go
unchecked was another frequently cited misstep. The survey showed that
hiring the right staff—and keeping them—is a key management
challenge. Even if their actions didn’t result in turnover,
managers regretted not being more supportive to staff. "Managing
people effectively requires offering support and making tough
decisions, and few people are naturally adept at both," said Max
Messmer, chairman of Accountemps. "Over time, however, most
supervisors learn from their mistakes and are able to improve weak
areas."
—AccountingWEB. Click
here to read more.
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July 19, 2004
• News from the Profession
Producing an Excellent
Performance and Accountability Report
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
This popular AGA training program provides you information and tools to
identify ways to improve federal agency PARs. The Certificate of Excellence in Accountability
Reporting (CEAR) Program’s review criteria, a
comprehensive compilation of annually updated federal financial and
performance reporting standards, regulations and authoritative
guidance, serves as the basis for instruction and is a valuable
overview. You will leave with a clear understanding of how federal
agencies can improve their reports. The training will cover:
• Essential PAR
sections—MD&A, performance section and financial section
•
Cost effectiveness measures and trend data
• Importance of integration and creativity
•
Comprehensiveness v. length—striking the right balance
•
Summary reports—the wave of the future?
• Commendable practices and avoiding the pitfalls
• Formatting—graphics, color, sidebars
Visit the AGA website for more
information.
GAO Debuts New Name, New Pay System
The U.S. General Accounting Office has a new name: the
Government
Accountability Office.
In early July President Bush signed the GAO Human Capital
Reform Act,
which also gives Comptroller General David M. Walker the
authority to
institute a new compensation program for agency employees, the
Washington Post reported.
Introduced nearly a year ago by Rep. Jo Ann S. Davis (R-VA) and
Sen.
George V. Voinovich (R-OH), the law allows Walker to use a
performance-
based pay system, separating the agency’s 3,200 employees
from the
federal general schedule system.
In addition to allowing changes in compensation practices,
the law
grants the GAO the permanent authority to offer employees
early
retirement and buyout packages, the Post reported.
"Congress relies specifically on the judgments of the comptroller
general
to manage his workforce to produce quality and timely
information for our
use," Davis said in a statement. "He has demonstrated
good faith and earned our confidence," Davis added.
—AccountingWEB. Click
here to read the complete story.
Management Grades Show Greatest Improvement Yet
During the third-quarter of fiscal 2004, federal
agencies took the largest leap forward yet on the Bush administration's
traffic-light-style score card marking accomplishments in five areas of
management reform. The score card, released every three months by
the Office of Management and Budget to rate 26 major agencies'
accomplishments in the five areas of President Bush's management
agenda, boasted 27 improved marks for the quarter ended June 30. Last
quarter, the card contained 11 higher scores, and cards dating back
further showed no more than 20 upgrades. The latest round of
improvements comes as OMB is assessing how agencies have fared since
last year on management goals that are part of the "Where We'd Be
Proud To Be" exercise. In that endeavor, OMB Deputy Director Clay
Johnson asked agency management chiefs to list the accomplishments they
felt they could achieve in each area of the agenda by July 1, the third
anniversary of five initiatives. "Proud To Be" goals
included getting 80 percent of e-government projects up and running and
assessing the performance of 60 percent of federal programs. OMB is
evaluating how close agencies have come to meeting the goals, and
Johnson plans to give President Bush an update reflecting progress at
the three-year mark of the management agenda. "Agencies were
aggressive in setting their Proud To Be goals and working to achieve
them," said OMB spokesman Chad Kolton. "Many achieved them
and should be justifiably proud of their success."
—Amelia Gruber, Government Executive.
Click here to read
more.
AGA’s FMSB
Examines IFAC Accounting for Social Policies of Governments,
Non-Exchange Transactions Proposals
AGA's Financial Management Standards Board has commented on two
proposals by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), one on
accounting for social policy obligations, and the other on revenue from
non-exchange transactions.
The FMSB commented on the IFAC’s "Accounting for Social
Policies of Governments" proposal, agreeing with
the Steering
Committee that there is a need for guidance on how to
account for
social policy obligations in the general purpose
financial statements
(GPFS) of public sector entities. The FMSB also sees
the need
to address the financial reporting consequences of
governments’ actions in providing a wide range of social benefits
to individuals and
organizations and their undertakings to provide benefits in the
future.
The FMSB agrees with the majority of the Steering Committee
Views
as expressed in the invitation to comment. The FMSB made
several
specific comments about the proposal.
Click here to view the complete response.
In the case of the non-exchange transactions, the FMSB said:
"FMSB agrees that the proper financial reporting of these classes
of revenue is essential if the financial statements of governments and
other public sector reporting entities are to be transparent, support
informed assessments of financial condition and discharge
accountability obligations," the FMSB said in a June 30 letter to
the IFAC's Public Sector Committee. However, the board said it
disagreed in three areas with the proposal, titled Revenue from
Non-Exchange Transactions (Including Taxes and Transfers).
Click here to view the complete
response.
SSA Pursues Greater Data-Sharing to Automate
Claims
Maybe the Social Security Administration (SSA) was ahead of its
time with its first big plan to automate disability claims. More than a
decade after SSA took its first stab at overhauling the disability
claims process—a doomed effort that cost $71 million and took
seven years before being abandoned in 1999—the agency is at it
again. This time, Social Security Administrator Jo Anne B. Barnhart has
vowed to go paperless by 2005 by creating electronic folders for the
millions of people who apply for disability benefits each year. The
idea is to let the far-flung agencies and doctors that handle the
mountains of claims documents do so using common folders online. The
agency hopes the effort will save money and ease the crushing case
backlogs that have plagued the national disability insurance program
for more than a decade. Barnhart's plan is on the frontier—some
might say the cliff—of a movement inside big corporations and
government agencies to exploit newer technologies allowing greater
data-sharing over networks. The agency has hired IBM to help it build a
mammoth 52-terabyte electronic repository that can be accessible to
65,000 users around the country. —Leslie Walker, The
Washington Post.
Click here to read more.
Mayors Slam Lower
Security Funding, Slowness of System
The Bush administration has proposed less money for homeland
security in fiscal 2005 than in the current year, an action that upsets
Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, who co-chairs the U.S.
Conference of Mayors’ homeland security task force. Under last
year’s enacted budget, nearly $4.1 billion went to key municipal
functions such as first-responder grants, a high-threat-areas program,
homeland security law enforcement and firefighter grants. For fiscal
year 2005, the total proposed by the administration is less than $3.5
billion.
The funding the cities are getting is neither adequate nor
direct, and many of the dollars get "stuck" at the state
level, O’Malley said June 28 at the 72nd annual mayors’
conference in Boston.
O’Malley also complained that because funds from 2003 and
2004 are still in the pipeline, the administration said localities
don’t need as much because they haven’t spent what
they’ve got. The system "creates a bottleneck and a backlog,
and then they wag their fingers at us and say we don’t need
more."
The administration is trying to "unstick" the funds,
responded Josh Filler, senior director of the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security’s Office of State and Local Government
Coordination. With $8 billion left from the previous two years added to
the president’s proposed 2005 amount, there could be $11.5
billion available, not including funds from other federal agencies, he
said.
Every level of government can do something to make the
distribution of funds work better, Filler added. The federal government
has to look hard at the reimbursement issue that is snagging
states’ and localities’ ability to spend money, and state
and local governments have to look at their legislative and procurement
processes, which are not "designed for speed" but rather to
combat waste and fraud, Filler said. — Ellen Perlman,
Governing.com. Click here to read
more.
OPM Studies Show Federal
Careers are Drawing Top Talent
U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kay Coles
James has said recent studies show the federal government is the
employer of choice for "a large and talented pool of enthusiastic
and well-educated people." Her conclusion was based on surveys
conducted among more than 300 finalists for positions with the
Presidential Management Fellows program and more than 900 attendees at
an April joint private- and public-sector job fair at Madison Square
Garden in New York City. At the job fair, respondents said that a
federal career appealed to them more than one in the private sector by
a ratio of 6 to 1. And nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were
more interested in government work today than they were a few years
ago. —Shawn Zeller, Government Executive. Click here to
read more.
IG: Medicare Officials
Held Back Cost Data, Didn't Break Law
Medicare officials withheld information requested by members of
Congress about the cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill and
threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary if he disclosed those
figures, according to an internal U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) probe, but the investigation determined Medicare
officials broke no laws. The report by the HHS inspector general is the
latest chapter in an ongoing controversy over the Medicare bill and the
tactics the administration used to build support for it in Congress.
The issue came to a boil when the administration revealed its $535
billion estimate of the bill only after Congress—whose own
number-crunchers estimated it would cost $385 billion—passed it
narrowly last year. The report concluded Thomas Scully,
then-administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
threatened to fire chief CMS actuary Richard Foster if he shared cost
estimates for the Medicare bill with members of Congress. But Scully or
other officials did not break any laws in doing so, the report found.
—Emily Heil, CongressDaily. Click here to read
more.
DoD Urged to Appoint
Chief Manager to Merge Financial Systems
To help resolve longstanding financial problems, the U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD) needs to change its management structure, a
GAO analyst told lawmakers recently. The Pentagon would benefit from
designating a chief management official to oversee the integration of
its multiple financial systems, said Gregory Kutz, director of
financial management and assurance at GAO, in testimony before the
House Government Reform Subcommittee on Efficiency and Financial
Management. He proposed making the post an Executive Level II official
appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a
seven-year term. Subcommittee members invited Kutz and Lawrence
Lanzillotta, acting undersecretary of Defense and comptroller, to
update them on progress toward completing the Business Management
Modernization Plan, a project started in 2001 to integrate the
department's thousands of disparate systems for transactions ranging
from settling accounts to procuring equipment. — Amelia Gruber,
Government Executive. Click here to read
more.
Stalemate in Congress
Ties States' Hands on Welfare Law
Welfare programs around the country are in limbo because of a
stalemate in Congress that has prompted state officials to postpone new
investments in child care, expansions of job training and most other
initiatives for welfare recipients and low-wage workers.
Congressional Republicans insist that stricter work
requirements must be part of any effort to renew the 1996 welfare law.
Democrats, including some who voted against that measure, now embrace
it, saying only minor changes are needed. Major provisions of the law
were scheduled to expire in September 2002. Since then, Congress has
passed seven bills extending the program, typically for three months at
a time. Lawmakers say they see little chance for approval of a
long-term reauthorization this year.
If the stalemate persists, states could lose money. The House
and the Senate have tentatively agreed to continue providing $16.5
billion a year for the main welfare program, Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families. But with large budget deficits looming, lawmakers say,
Congress will be under intense pressure to cut this amount next year.
The impasse is remarkable because lawmakers of both parties
describe the 1996 law as a success that moved millions of people from
welfare to work and cut the welfare rolls by 60 percent, to 4.9 million
people. A main goal of the law was to give more control over welfare
policy to state and local officials, who now say their hands are tied
because of Congress's inaction. —Robert Pear and Raymond
Hernandez, The New York Times.
Click here to read more.
Internet Users Rank
Department of State, FAA Sites Most Improved
Some government websites are earning high marks from Internet
users and appear to be building a following among the public, according
to the latest findings of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The
index's e-government report covers 53 federal websites that have
volunteered to be scored based on their content, appearance, search
engines and other functions. The U.S. Department of State's student
site and the Federal Aviation
Administration's site improved most over a nine-month period
measured by the index. Other sites that improved their rankings
included OPM’s recruitment
site, the Department of
State's job site and the National
Library of Medicine site.
Overall, the index shows "mixed results in terms of how
successful agencies are," said Larry Freed, chief executive of
ForeSee Results Inc., which helps produce the e-gov satisfaction
report. But "channel loyalty" emerged as a common finding in
the latest quarterly index, an indication that some federal websites
are becoming a preferred way for many Americans to get information,
Freed said. On average, the federal websites scored 70.3 on the
100-point index. The more effective sites, such as those operated by
OPM and the U.S. Mint, posted scores in the high 70s that put them near
or on par with the private sector. —Stephen Barr, The
Washington Post.
Click here to read more.
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