tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-151319912024-02-08T07:52:42.113-05:00Federal Financial Management News Web LogWeb Log for Federal Financial Management -- Federal CFO, CPO, CIO, CAO, and CHCO news aggregated from open sources, such as: GAO, USHR, USS, Federal, State, & Local Agencies, IGs, and Watchdog organizations for public consumption.WDDJRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01536182440571252954noreply@blogger.comBlogger1936125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15131991.post-6342130917391578382017-06-22T12:49:00.000-04:002017-06-22T12:49:03.039-04:00Key Financial Management Positions Lack Nominees<div>
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The Washington Post and <a href="https://ourpublicservice.org/">Partnership for Public Service</a>, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, are tracking more than 500 key executive branch nominations through the confirmation process. These positions include Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsel, heads of agencies, ambassadors and other critical leadership positions. These are a portion of the roughly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-transition-appointments-scale/">1,200 positions</a> that require Senate confirmation.</div>
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The Senate can only act on nominations that have been formally submitted by the Trump administration.</div>
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There are several agencies lacking nominees for key financial management positions as listed below.</div>
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<u>Agencies without a nominee for Chief Financial Officer:</u></div>
<ul>
<li>Department of State</li>
<li>Department of Agriculture</li>
<li>Department of Commerce</li>
<li>Department of Education</li>
<li>Department of Energy</li>
<li>Department of Homeland Security</li>
<li>Department of Housing and Urban Development</li>
<li>Department of Labor</li>
<li>Department of Transportation</li>
<li>Department of Veterans Affairs</li>
<li>Department of the Treasury</li>
<li>Environmental Protection Agency</li>
<li>National Aeronautics and Space Administration</li>
</ul>
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<u>Agencies without a nominee for Inspector General:</u></div>
<ul>
<li>Department of Defense</li>
<li>Department of Energy</li>
<li>Department of the Interior</li>
<li>Central Intelligence Agency</li>
<li>Small Business Administration</li>
<li>Export-Import Bank</li>
<li>Office of Personnel Management</li>
<li>Social Security Administration</li>
</ul>
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The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program–a joint program of the Treasury, GAO, OMB and OPM–will hold its annual Federal Financial Management Conference on May 8 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.</div>
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“This one-day conference provides a forum for those in the federal financial management community to learn about current issues, exchange knowledge, and share experiences in improving financial management operations and policies,” according to the announcement.</div>
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Also, the organization is soliciting nominations through March 7 for the annual Donald L. Scantlebury Memorial Award, which recognizes “senior financial management executives who, through outstanding and continuous leadership in financial management, have been principally responsible for significant economies, efficiencies and improvements in the government.”</div>
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Further information is on the <a href="https://cfo.gov/">CFO Council site</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://www.fedweek.com/federal-managers-daily-report/financial-management-conference-scheduled/">READ MORE...</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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Federal financial managers received some shrewd advice last week. Stop talking like financial managers.</div>
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Stop talking about clean opinions. Don’t talk about material weaknesses. You don’t need to mention the CFO Act or the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act.</div>
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With new leaders coming in across every agency, federal financial managers, instead, should focus on value and mission support.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 900; line-height: inherit;">Adam Goldberg</span>, the executive architect at the Treasury Department’s Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT), said by focusing on how the CFO’s office furthers the agency’s mission, agency budget and financial management executives can change the conversation about back-office functions.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 900; line-height: inherit;">Richard Haley</span>,<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 900; line-height: inherit;"> </span>the FBI CFO, said his folks have to communicate in the language that agents and leaders use every day. He said they shouldn’t have to work hard to understand financial management initiatives.</div>
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Goldberg said it’s about shifting the conversation to talk about what the agency needs to better support agency operations.</div>
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The point of the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), for example, aims to close the gap between IT, acquisition and mission areas. It forces the chief information officer into discussions about <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/cio-news/2016/09/cios-optimism-growing-around-modernization-fitara/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">planning and procuring</a> mission critical technology.</div>
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In the human resources world, we’ve heard about chief human capital officers begging and pleading mission area hiring managers to make decisions, review applications and are involved in every step of the process. The Office of Personnel Management <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/hiringretention/2016/11/opm-omb-attempt-make-hiring-excellence-stick-new-guidance/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">issued guidance</a> in November stressing the need to engage and empower hiring managers.</div>
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The idea behind all of these efforts is to break down the siloes that have built up over time for probably no real reason, creates layers of inefficiency and leads to the perception of a stilted bureaucracy and inefficiency.</div>
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Treasury is trying to help agencies remove these barriers for the financial management folks. The department is developing a maturity model to help agencies think about how their <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2016/05/risk-becoming-key-conversation-c-suite/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">CFO offices</a> are impacting mission beyond just “being the money people.”</div>
<br />
-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: serif; font-size: 17px;">The Government Accountability Office says many federal agencies’ financial books are in such bad shape that they cannot be audited.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-283R" style="background-color: white; color: rgb(0, 102, 204) !important; font-family: serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-top-color; transition-timing-function: linear;" target="_blank">In a report</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: serif; font-size: 17px;"> released last week, the GAO said material weaknesses in accounting procedures “hamper the federal government’s ability to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, costs and other related information.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: serif; font-size: 17px;">The GAO said its report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal years 2015 and 2016 “underscores that much work remains to improve federal financial management.” The agency couldn’t even express an opinion on the balance sheets because of the weak financial reporting.</span><br />
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GAO noted that 34 percent of the federal government’s reported assets and 18 percent of its reported net cost relate to federal entities that were unable to issue audited financial statements, were unable to receive audit opinions on the complete set of financial statements or received a disclaimer of opinion on their statements.</div>
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The GAO called out the <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204) !important; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-top-color; transition-timing-function: linear;" target="_blank">Department of Health and Human Services</a> and <a href="https://www.defense.gov/" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204) !important; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-top-color; transition-timing-function: linear;" target="_blank">Department of Defense</a>, in particular, for weak internal controls.</div>
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The agency also took a shot at the <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204) !important; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-top-color; transition-timing-function: linear;" target="_blank">Department of the Treasury</a> and the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 204) !important; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-top-color; transition-timing-function: linear;" target="_blank">Office of Management and Budget</a>, noting that some of the “numerous recommendations” GAO made to those agencies in previous years to address internal control deficiencies remain unaddressed. The secretary of the Treasury and director of OMB are required to annually submit financial statements for the U.S. government, audited by the GAO, to the president and Congress.</div>
-Johnny Kampis, Watchdog.org<br />
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The Defense Department has spent well over a decade and tens of billions of dollars to buy <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/congress/2013/03/pentagon-applying-lessons-from-past-erp-failures/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">enterprise resource planning </a>(ERP) systems with the hope that they would help the military adopt modern, automated business processes and pave the way to financial auditability. But a strikingly small number of DoD financial managers think the systems have done anything to make their jobs easier.</div>
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The finding is part of an <a href="https://www.grantthornton.com/~/media/content-page-files/public-sector/pdfs/surveys/2016/ASMC-Defense-Survey.ashx" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">annual survey and report</a> by the American Society of Military Comptrollers and Grant Thornton. Only 20 percent of the Defense financial workforce said the ERPs had reduced their workload. Another 20 percent said they had made no difference, and 15 percent said they’d actually made their lives more complicated than working with the decades-old legacy systems the ERPS are replacing.</div>
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This year’s report represents the ninth year in a row in which researchers have surveyed hundreds of rank-and-file and senior executive members of the Pentagon’s financial management community. Aside from IT modernization, it found at least three other common themes that repeated themselves year-after-year.</div>
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Among the most obvious: comptrollers have become fed up with <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2016/09/carter-eighth-consecutive-year-continuing-resolutions-deplorable-creates-strategic-risk/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">budget uncertainty</a> after having to navigate through eight consecutive years of continuing resolutions, government shutdowns and limitations imposed by the Budget Control Act. As one anonymous respondent put it: “We’re great at building a budget and manpower models based on forecast costs and requirements,” but budgets have had to be “modified continually in response to lower than expected levels of actual receipt of funds.”</div>
<br />
- FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
https://shar.es/1O4IMB via @fednewsradio<div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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overview of the Government's current financial position, as well as critical insight into our long term
fiscal outlook.<br />
<br />
The Citizen’s Guide to the Fiscal Year 2016 Financial Report of the U.S. Government (Financial Report)
summarizes the U.S. Government’s current financial position and condition, and discusses key financial topics,
including fiscal sustainability. This Guide and the Financial Report are produced by the U.S. Department of the
Treasury in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the Executive Office of the
President. The Secretary of the Treasury, Director of OMB, and Comptroller General of the United States at the
Government Accountability Office believe that the information discussed in this Guide is important to all
Americans. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/finrep/fr/fr_index.htm">Find the Report here....</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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The Justice Department is on schedule to meet the DATA Act implementation deadline — sort of.</div>
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DOJ’s Office of Inspector General recently issued a <a href="https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/a1709.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">review</a> of the department’s progress toward standardizing its financial spending reports, and according to the internal watchdog, “nothing came to our attention that caused us to believe that a material modification should be made” to Justice’s plans to meet the May 2017 deadline.</div>
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But the IG did note “areas of concern that potentially could impact the department’s ability to most effectively meet all the requirements within the requisite timeframe.”</div>
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Those areas of concern range from completing a full inventory, mapping and gap analysis of the department to an incomplete data extraction standard.</div>
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The inspector general looked at the first four steps of the eight-step plan recommended by the Treasury Department for DATA Act implementation. Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget are the agencies spearheading the work.</div>
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Within the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act is a requirement that agency IGs report on the law’s implementation. The first set of reports was due in November, however, the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) recommended last December that because the spending data would not be available for November 2016, that the first required reports be due November 2017, with additional reports in 2019 and 2020.</div>
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According to the review, the Department has three financial systems: the Unified Financial Management System (UFMS); the Financial Management Information System 2 (FMIS2), a legacy financial system; and the Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) system.</div>
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Instead of inventorying these systems, DOJ inventoried the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) procurement information in UFMS and an initial inventory of the Office of Justice Programs’ (OJP) grant award information in FMIS2 — with the hope that the lessons learned could be applied to the other financial systems.</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">-Meredith Sommers, FederalNewsRadio.com</span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Sheila Conley, deputy assistant secretary and deputy chief financial officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, is one of 50 new fellows for the National Academy of Public Administration.</em></div>
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How will you use your NAPA fellowship to promote/influence good government?</h4>
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NAPA provides a unique opportunity to engage with a wide range of fellows, who are knowledgeable and experienced in government management and policy matters.</div>
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I am looking forward to tapping into the collective expertise and wisdom of the fellows to help inform and advance the business portfolio at HHS while also participating in efforts to address pressing governmentwide issues, such as reducing improper payments and enhancing program integrity. It is more important than ever to champion good government initiatives and best practices, many of which can be gleaned from NAPA reports and studies.</div>
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What do you think is the most important change the government needs to make in the next 5 years?</h4>
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Enterprise risk management (ERM) is an emerging discipline in the federal government that, if properly implemented could strengthen agency decision-making, performance and ability to accomplish mission goals. ERM challenges agencies to develop a risk aware culture, identify and prioritize enterprise risks and establish a risk appetite to help align agency resources with areas of greatest risk. Successful ERM implementation requires changes in organizational culture, behaviors and attitudes about risk at every level of the agency. While it is critical for ERM to be endorsed by agency officials “setting the tone at the top,” it is also important to assess the “mood in the middle” and “buzz at the base” of the organization to develop a sustainable program that aligns with the agency’s culture. Depending on an organization’s willingness and ability to enhance ERM, it could take five years or more to achieve the many benefits of a successful ERM program. </div>
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Personally identifiable information and data “validity” are the focus of the Office of Management and Budget’s latest DATA Act guidance.</div>
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In a Nov. 6 <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2017/m-17-04.pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">memo</a> to agencies, OMB delves into detail for reporting certain types of federal financial assistance and awards under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act.</div>
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The guidance does not change or affect any existing policy, OMB clarifies, but does “further [specify] (1) responsibilities for reporting financial information for awards involving Intragovernmental Transfers (IGTs), (2) guidance for reporting financial assistance award records containing personally identifiable information (PII), and (3) guidance for agencies to provide the Senior Accountable Official (SAO) assurance over quarterly submissions to USASpending.gov,” the memo states.</div>
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According to the latest guidance, two types of intragovernmental transfers are included under DATA Act reporting: allocation transfers and buy/sell transactions.</div>
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OMB directs agencies that starting with their first DATA Act reporting on allocation transfers, the agency will “submit and assure the appropriations information, program activity and object class, and award financial information for allocation transfers for display on <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/Default.aspx" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">USASpending.gov</a>.”</div>
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As for buy/sell transactions, both the awarding and funding agencies must submit information for spending reports.</div>
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Under the new guidance, if a Federal Award Identification Number (FAIN) is included in details for a single award, the agency should report that award to USASpending “as a single, discrete record.”</div>
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If single award-level reporting isn’t possible, agencies can report aggregated awards at a county or state level.</div>
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As of the Nov. 6 guidance, however, the DAIMS [DATA Act Information Model Schema] only offers guidance for aggregate county level.</div>
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OMB directs agencies to continue the county-level reporting practice until that schema is modified.</div>
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The guidance is the latest in a <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/omb/2016/05/omb-releases-data-act-reminder-1-year-countdown-starts/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">series </a>of OPM memos and updates for agencies, as they prepare for the May 2017 implementation of the DATA Act.</div>
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Officials with OMB and Treasury — the two agencies spearheading the DATA Act’s implementation — stand by the progress toward full adoption, while GAO auditors have repeatedly warned that the federal spending standardization could <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/management/2016/09/hud-falling-behind-data-act-implementation/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">fall behind</a> if agencies don’t get in line with the legislation’s requirements.</div>
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In early August, a GAO <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/management/2016/08/path-data-act-rollout-hits-another-roadblock/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">report </a>warned that Treasury’s 4-month delay for releasing its <a href="https://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/data-model/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">schema</a> version 1.0, triggered the delay of industry software patches while companies waited for a “stable version of the schema.”</div>
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That assessment came on the heels of another GAO <a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/technology/2016/07/gao-data-act-implementation-risk-reporting-agencies-arent-monitored/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0093d0; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">report</a> that said the full rollout of the DATA Act is at risk if OMB and Treasury don’t take steps to improve the review of agency plans and monitoring of progress updates.</div>
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<a href="http://federalnewsradio.com/management/2016/11/ombs-latest-data-act-guidance-highlights-pii-financial-assistance/">Read More...</a></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial"; mso-special-format: bullet;">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">OMB Memo 15-12: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2015/m-15-12.pdf">https://</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2015/m-15-12.pdf">www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2015/m-15-12.pdf</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial"; mso-special-format: bullet;">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">OMB </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">MPM Memo 2016-03: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/financial/memos/management-procedures-memorandum-no-2016-03-additional-guidance-for-data-act-implementation.pdf">https://</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/financial/memos/management-procedures-memorandum-no-2016-03-additional-guidance-for-data-act-implementation.pdf">www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/financial/memos/management-procedures-memorandum-no-2016-03-additional-guidance-for-data-act-implementation.pdf</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial"; mso-special-format: bullet;">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DATA </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Act </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Data Elements guidance</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://community.max.gov/pages/viewpage.action?spaceKey=Management&title=B:+DATA+Act+Elements+Guidance">https://community.max.gov/pages/viewpage.action?spaceKey=Management&title=B%3A+DATA+Act+Elements+Guidance</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial"; mso-special-format: bullet;">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DATA Act </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">GitHub site: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/">https://fedspendingtransparency.github.io</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://fedspendingtransparency.github.io/">/</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial"; mso-special-format: bullet;">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">DATA Act Policy FAQs: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://community.max.gov/display/Management/DATA+Act+Implementation+Other+Resources">https://community.max.gov/display/Management/DATA+Act+Implementation+Other+Resources</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #0046ac; font-family: "arial";">–</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">RSS: </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://community.max.gov/x/CIbyL">https</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://community.max.gov/x/CIbyL">://</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><a href="https://community.max.gov/x/CIbyL">community.max.gov/x/CIbyL</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></div>
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<br />
If we can apply four lessons from buying a car to the workplace, we can be as happy with our new systems as we are with our new cars.<br />
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1) Focus on what’s unique<br />
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2) Leave the engine to the engineers<br />
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3) Keep your priorities straight<br />
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4) Take it for a test drive<br />
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The process of buying a car can teach us a lot about how we should (and shouldn’t) approach requirements gathering for shared services migrations. Use the resources at your disposal to start with the baseline and focus on what’s unique, stay away from trying to design the system, make sure you stay realistic about your priorities, and of course take it for a test drive. This will help make sure that you don’t end up with a high-end sports car when all you can afford and all you really need is the economy model.<br />
<br />
About the Authors<br />
<br />
Teia Clarke, Deloitte Consulting Senior Manager in Federal Practice Shared Services<br />
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Karen Ganley, Deloitte Consulting Specialist Leader in Oracle and Technology Implementation<br />
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<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shared-services-requirements-kicking-tires-karen-ganley?trk=hb_ntf_MEGAPHONE_ARTICLE_POST">READ MORE...</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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The following urls provide starting points to locate the publications.<br />
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http://www.performance.gov/<br />
http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/federal_financial_accountability/issue_summary<br />
http://www.treasury.gov/about/budget-performance/annual-performance-plan/Pages/default.aspx<br />
@FedCFO<br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">WASHINGTON, D.C. – October 21, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — Today, October 20, 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announces another major milestone in transitioning HUD’s financial management and procurement operations to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center (ARC). This milestone marks the shift of financial and procurement management functions from HUD to ARC. Although significant work remains, HUD is the first cabinet-level agency to move core financial systems to a Federal Shared Service Provider.In 2010, HUD reviewed its aging financial systems, and decided to transition from costly legacy systems that did not provide the necessary scale and breadth required to meet today’s financial management needs. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">This collaborative relationship between HUD and Treasury is the result of the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy. In May 2012, the Office of Management & Budget (OMB) announced the strategy to agencies for identifying and operating shared services for commodity, support, and mission IT functions. That strategy recommended a phased approach for implementing shared services, (e.g., “crawl-walk-run”) beginning with intra-agency commodity IT, to allow agencies to gain proficiency, then evolving to support and mission IT areas.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The transformative project has made significant progress to date. In October 2014, HUD began its phased implementation, migrating travel functions, and in February 2015, its time and attendance functions. Together with the most recent payment processing milestones, HUD’s New Core project continues to enhance financial transparency and analytical capabilities, increase regulatory compliance, and improve efficiency through the transition of HUD’s core financials and key administrative systems and services. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">### </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">About HUD:</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes: utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.govand http://espanol.hud.gov. You can also follow HUD on twitter @HUDgov, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HUD, or sign up for news alerts on HUD’s News Listserv. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">About Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center (ARC): </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">ARC helps customers, like HUD, focus on their mission by delivering responsive, customer-focused, cost-effective administrative support to other federal agencies. The reimbursable administrative services that ARC provides include financial management, human resources, procurement, travel and relocation, and information technology services. For more information please visit: our website at https://fiscal.treas.gov. </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Jereon Brown 202-708-0685 </span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">http://www.hud.gov/news/index.cfm</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.realestaterama.com/2015/10/21/hud-marks-a-major-shared-services-milestone-with-financial-services-migration-ID029019.html">READ MORE...</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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“We’re off to a great start on tough challenges, but outsiders don’t really appreciate how complex government is,” he said at a breakfast sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Government Analytics program and REI Systems. <br />
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“We’re not a small business,” Lebryk said, referring to the federal government. “We’re the biggest entity in the world. And at a time of budget constraints, there is more scrutiny of spending, of which the DATA Act is a part.”<br />
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Lebryk and Comptroller David Mader are leading the team charged with implementing the DATA Act, which is designed to standardize spending information in machine-readable formats to make it accessible to the public. “With no new funding,” Lebryk said, “we’ve tried to think it through creatively, to use technology as our friend. We’re not doing massive system changes, and it’s important that the data be owned by the agencies.”<br />
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This <a href="http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/04/refreshed-usaspending-website-irks-some-transparency-advocates/109258/">spring’s upgrade</a> of USASpending.gov—to which some transparency advocates objected—was done with an eye on three types of users, Lebryk said: casual users in the general public; those who want analytic tools to drill deeply; and those who simply want the data and don’t care about the tools. The recent upgrade was intended to enhance the second group, he said. “We were trying for improvements in usability, but not trying to improve the quality of the data,” which is where the DATA Act will come in, he said.<br />
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One of Lebryk’s teammates at the Office of Management and Budget gave additional details on progress at the June 10 <a href="http://www.govexec.com/technology/2015/06/warner-pushes-data-act-follow-through/115012/">Data Act Summit</a> sponsored by the Data Transparency Coalition.<br />
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Karen Lee, branch chief at OMB’s Office of Federal Financial Management, said the DATA Act already is, “changing the way government does its work, changing the way it interacts with non-federal partners” as it becomes institutionalized. She described pilot programs to reduce the burden of agency reporting. “There’s no one regulation or policy that is a magic bullet, as there are many sources for the burden,” Lee said. But the multi-agency implementation team is seeking to curb multiple requirements for supplying the same information, she said.<br />
-Charles S. Clark, GovExec.com<br />
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That we knew, thanks to a Government Accountability Office report issued a few months back. But recent inspector general reports round out the picture by showing where agencies go wrong.<br />
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Of the 24 CFO Act agencies — those required to have audited financial statements —about half failed to comply with the law on improper payments, according to a preliminary analysis of the IG reports by the accounting firm Grant Thornton. The low scorers include the agencies that misspent the most money: the departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, Agriculture and the Social Security Administration.<br />
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The overall picture seems, at first glance, worse than in past years, when inspectors general evaluated agencies on a multilevel scale that ranged from "compliant" to "noncompliant." While agencies have made strides in some of their programs, complying with the improper payments law is now pass-fail, thanks to guidance the White House issued in October.<br />
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"They're trying to say, ‘No more wiggle room. You're either compliant or not compliant,'" said Grant Thornton Principal Robert Shea.<br />
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-Emily Kopp, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
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Every year, tens of billions of tax dollars are lost to waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government. But much more could be lost if it wasn't for a team of federal watchdogs tasked with flagging any inefficiencies or wrongdoing within all government programs and projects.</div>
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That's according to the Special Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)—the group in charge of overseeing the 15 presidentially appointed IG's. The group consistently reminds lawmakers of out how the auditors' work saves the federal government billions of dollars each year—despite their annual collective operating budget of over $1 billion. </div>
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This year, CIGIE said that taken together, all of the auditors' recommendations this year would result in about $32 billion in savings, The Washington Examiner first reported. Recommendations typically include telling agencies to ramp up their oversight or come up with a new policy that will help them run more efficiently.</div>
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The investigations this year have already resulted in $11 billion that was returned to the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/10000894" style="color: #2d648a; font-family: 'Gotham Narrow SSm 5r'; outline: none; text-decoration: none;" target="_self">Treasury</a>. </div>
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The IG's total operating budget for 2014 was about $1.6 billion, according to CIGIE's financial audit for 2014.</div>
-Brianna Ehley, CNBC.com<br />
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Federal CIOs got an early Christmas gift from Congress in 2014: explicit authority to plan and approve their department’s information technology budgets.</div>
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Under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), which Congress passed as an amendment to the <a href="http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=926D63B6-5E50-49FC-99EF-A59B98825265" style="-webkit-transition: all, 0.15s; box-sizing: border-box; color: #54bdeb; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all, 0.15s; white-space: pre-line; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">2015 National Defense Authorization Act</a>, CIOs are responsible for reviewing and approving department IT contracts. Department CIOs will also play a more direct role in the hiring of any bureau-level CIOs. The new law requires that department CIOs approve those appointments.</div>
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“I think this is going to be an interesting time in federal IT because, for the first time, we will see federal CIOs take ownership of the IT landscape in their agencies,” says General Services Administration (GSA) CIO and <a href="http://www.fedtechmagazine.com/article/2014/12/50-must-read-federal-it-blogs-2014" style="-webkit-transition: all, 0.15s; box-sizing: border-box; color: #54bdeb; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all, 0.15s; white-space: pre-line; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">FedTech</em> must-read IT blogger</a> Sonny Hashmi.</div>
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FITARA applies to CIOs at civilian departments.</div>
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GSA was an early adopter of the consolidated IT approach, and Hashmi has experienced the benefits and challenges of having the agency’s IT under his authority.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.479999989271164px; line-height: 1.6;">He cautions against the bureaucracy that can bog down organizations with consolidated IT. They can become oversight driven, slow to respond and less innovative if they don’t strike the right balance, Hashmi says.</span></div>
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At GSA, Hashmi and his team are investing in transformative projects while reducing the amount of legacy systems. Most GSA systems are antiquated, and some are a quarter of a century old. While the systems run well, modernizing them would help reduce costs and make systems more flexible to meet emerging technology demands.</div>
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Federal Communications Commission CIO David Bray has similar challenges with legacy systems. Bray wants to find an easier way to port legacy systems to cloud-based providers.</div>
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-Nicole Blake Johnson, FedTechMagazine.com<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act is in full swing, with the Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department catching headlines in their path to issue a governmentwide set of financial data standards by May 2015. But quietly in the background, the Department of Health and Human Services is gearing up to lead a two-year pilot of the DATA Act to test how data standardization in a complex federal ecosystem works.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Section 5 of the DATA Act — a mandate for financial data transparency in conjunction with USAspending.gov — requires OMB to launch a pilot, and the office chose HHS to test the waters of the act’s massive and complex data standardization efforts. Beginning next May, a year after the act was signed into law, HHS will be the test dummy for the grant portion of the DATA Act to help OMB, the Treasury and the federal government as a whole better understand things like “the impact of data standardization across many different lines of business” and “where there are opportunities to eliminate unnecessary duplication of financial reporting,” Amy Haseltine, director of DATA Act Program Management Office and chief DATA Act officer with HHS, explained to FedScoop.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">This two-year pilot of the act is by no means a walk in the park, though all agencies are required by May 2017 to report their financial statements in accordance with the new standards. But Haseltine thinks HHS will benefit greatly from its work. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">-Billy Mitchell, FedScoop.com </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inspectors general are the “best friends” of program managers and the White House budget office when it comes to catching fraud and reducing agency improper payments, the deputy U.S. controller said on Wednesday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mark Reger, now in his third month as the No. 2 at the Office of Federal Financial Management, said his team is reworking Circular A-123 guidance on controlling for financial integrity “to make it less prescriptive and to rely on the people on the ground,” particularly inspectors general.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #231f20; line-height: 23.4000015258789px;">Reger, a former Maryland State Treasury official, noted that the rate of bad payments has dropped steadily over the past four years, thanks in part to Congress’s enactment of the 2012 Credit Card Fraud Prevention Act and the 2012 </span><a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-sign-improper-payments-elimination-and-recovery-act" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #1e6caa; line-height: 23.4000015258789px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #231f20; line-height: 23.4000015258789px;">. “The most important tool is the education of agency enforcers in the field,” he said, praising the watchdogs for gathering better data, working together and sharing information. “I don’t know a single inspector general who isn’t thrilled to find additional money.”</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The increasing use of data analytics has allowed progress in such areas as federal employee misuse of credit or<span style="line-height: 23.4000015258789px;">that it’s not okay to steal from federal government, it’s not sexy,” Reger said.</span><span style="line-height: 23.4000015258789px;"> purchasing cards, the deputy controller said. “The data is now generated back to the agencies every day,” he said. “Employees found to have committed fraud have had their cards cancelled, or been fired, or disciplined in some fashion.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coming changes to the financial controls circular will include requiring fewer reports and more-detailed categories of fraud, or “bucketing,” to distinguish, for example, between an unmerited payment and a claim lacking proper documentation, he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 23.4000015258789px;">Reger urged IGs, program managers and vendors to report fraud to the Government Accountability Office’s fraud line at </span><a href="mailto:fraudnet@gao.net" style="border: 0px; color: #1b93d0; line-height: 23.4000015258789px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">fraudnet@gao.net</a><span style="line-height: 23.4000015258789px;">, and to peruse their own Medicare bills in search of bad charges. “Please reinforce that it’s not okay to steal from federal government, it’s not sexy,” Reger said.</span></span></div>
- Charles S. Clark, GovExec.com<br />
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The IG received over 29,000 complaints against DHS employees and opened more than 1,000 investigations — achieving 300 convictions and affecting 100 personnel action. DHS must quickly recognize poor performers and illegal acts and move to stop them, the IG said.<br />
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The agency also struggles with delivering its acquisitions on time and on budget with the right capabilities, according to the report. While DHS has made some efforts to better manage its acquisitions it needs to continually improve and assess its efforts, the IG said.<br />
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DHS should also work on other management issues, including:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Financial management: While the agency was able to obtain a clean financial audit for the second year in a row, it required considerable manual effort by the agency to overcome flaws in its financial IT systems, according to the IG. The agency needs to strengthen its financial management programs to eliminate these issues and make it easier to produce a clean audit.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Grants management: Most of the challenges in grant management rest with the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which did not properly spend and document about 23 percent of disaster-assistance grants.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Operations integration: The IG identified projects and programs shared between agencies that had weak levels of oversight, and that the agency does not have adequate systems to centrally track some of these shared programs. DHS spent more than $35.3 million on a fleet of cars shared between components that were underused, the IG said.</li>
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DHS agreed with many of the IG findings and said that many of the issues are being addressed by the agency-wide effort to coordinate and combine a diverse set of legacy agencies into one cohesive unit. The “Unity of Effort” initiative is building important bridges in DHS’ planning, programming and budgeting processes, according to Jim Crumpacker, the director of the departmental IG liaison office.<br />
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-Andy Medici, FederalTimes.com<br />
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As Russell Deyo sailed through his nomination hearing Wednesday to be the next undersecretary for management at the Homeland Security Department, his management approach and priorities centered on data.</div>
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The retired Johnson & Johnson <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/473/3690851/Obama-to-nominate-new-DHS-undersecretary-for-management" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">executive</a> told Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs lawmakers that getting DHS to have standard financial data will lead to better and more strategic decision making.</div>
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If confirmed, Deyo would <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=474&sid=3565846&pid=0&page=2" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">replace Rafael Borras</a>, who left in February after more than four years on the job.</div>
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DHS reached a milestone in 2013 when, for the first time ever, it received an unqualified opinion from auditors for its financial management processes.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 16.7999992370605px;">Deyo said he recognizes that accomplishment and wants to make sure DHS doesn't slip back from there. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 16.7999992370605px;">At the same time, he said the next step toward better financial management has to happen sooner than later.</span></div>
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"The next big piece, as far as I can see so far, is we need to have a fully integrated financial management system across all the components. You have to have reliable information, so you can make smart budget decisions and have good analytics to make good strategic decisions. And having ledger sheets that don't match up, and you can't compare apples to apples across the groups, makes it very, very difficult to make informed, strategic decisions," Deyo said. "I think it's critical the agency have a long-term focus, and you can't do that if you don't have reliable data. So that is an existent high priority within the finance group and indeed the leadership of the department, and I strongly embrace that."</div>
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He said during his time at Johnson & Johnson, having a common financial system was essential in making strategic decisions.</div>
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DHS is heading down a path toward reducing the number of financial management systems used by the agency. Right now, there are 13 separate systems, but three components are moving to Interior's National Business Center, including the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard.</div>
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-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
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IGs say those must-do's are distracting them from enterprising work that could shed light on riskier agency behavior.</div>
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A new <a href="https://www.agacgfm.org/AGA/Research/AGAIGSurvey2014_final.pdf" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">survey</a> of 28 inspectors general by the Association of Government Accountants and Kearney & Company P.C. shows IGs are concerned about their effectiveness, as they balance work requirements against tight budgets and difficulties in getting needed information.</div>
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Along with the online survey, conducted in June, the researchers interviewed a mix of staff at federal IG offices. The researchers delved more deeply into problems uncovered in a similar <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/204/3455531/Budget-constraints-top-IG-concerns-new-survey-reveals" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">survey</a> done a year ago.</div>
<br />
-Emily Kopp, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.1599998474121px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.1599998474121px;"><a href="http://gao.gov/greenbook/overview">2014 Green Book Overview</a> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.1599998474121px;"><a href="http://gao.gov/products/gao-14-704G">2014 Green Book</a></span></span><br />
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In a letter to the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the IGs say auditors from those three agencies recently faced restrictions on their access to certain records.</div>
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"In each of these instances, we understand that lawyers in these agencies construed other statutes and law applicable to privilege in a manner that would override the express authorization contained in the IG Act," the IGs wrote. "These restrictive readings of the IG Act represent potentially serious challenges to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner."</div>
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In the <a href="http://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/issues/upload/IG%20Access%20Letter%20to%20Congress%2008-05-2014.pdf" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">letter to the oversight committees</a>, the IGs detail their concerns for each of the three agencies.</div>
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The IGs asked for members of Congress to provide a strong reaffirmation of the powers granted them under the IG Act.</div>
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Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) released the letter as part of his long-standing support of IG independence.</div>
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Congress has sought to empower IGs even more over the last few years. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/147/3600668/McCaskill-drafting-new-IG-bill-with-focus-on-small-agencies" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">drafting a bill</a> to give small agency auditors more power.</div>
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At a hearing January before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, three agency IGs &mash; Justice, Peace Corps and the Small Business Administration — <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=522&sid=3543091&pid=0&page=1" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">told lawmakers</a> that slashed budgets and dwindling staff sizes are hindering their ability to conduct robust oversight.</div>
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Additionally, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) wants Congress to give IGs more authority to use computer matching programs to root out waste, fraud and abuse.</div>
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IGs as a group last received a boost in 2008 when Congress passed and then- President George W. Bush signed into <a href="http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-110publ409/pdf/PLAW-110publ409.pdf" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">law</a> the <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/86/1577120/Remaking-the-World-of-Inspectors-General" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">Inspectors General Reform Act</a>.</div>
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-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
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Agencies have not been properly reporting their grants and loans to USASpending.gov, according to the Government Accountability Office. A probe of data on the website found that only 2-to-7 percent of awards listed were entirely consistent when checked against agencies records.</div>
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"Although agencies generally reported information for contracts to USASpending.gov, they did not properly report information on assistance awards, totaling nearly $619 billion," GAO said in its <a href="http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/664536.pdf" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">report</a> it released Friday.</div>
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GAO said the most common data inconsistency were descriptions of an award's place of performance. The names of recipients are the most consistent between records and online. GAO could not determine how consistent other award records were because agencies' records were incomplete or inadequate.</div>
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The report said 10 percent of awards information could not be verified and a significant amount of information could not be verified about program source information and the state of performance.</div>
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Among the inconsistencies, GAO found that some online awards records did not have verifiable data from their issuing agencies. The Office of Management and Budget placed requirements on agencies to ensure their data has substantiated information and verifying documents, but GAO said the standards have not been effective.</div>
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Federal funding of the improperly reported awards totaled $619 billion. GAO recommended OMB issue guidance clarifying agencies' reporting requirements.</div>
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It also wants agencies to keep better records to verify information on USASpending.gov and wants an oversight process to regularly check consistency between the records.</div>
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GAO's report is not the first time USASpending.gov has <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=&sid=1758638" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">come under fire</a>. In 2013, <a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/513/3364282/OMB-sets-new-deadlines-to-improve-data-on-USASpendinggov" style="color: #061d61; outline: none medium;" target="_blank">OMB gave</a> agencies a November 2014 deadline to assure that all information on the site is accurate.</div>
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- Ariel Levin-Waldman, FederalNewsRadio.com<br />
<a href="http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=513&sid=3675207">READ MORE...</a><br />
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