Are agency CFOs up for budget battles?

The federal budget environment — complicated by Congress and the shifting political winds — has only made the job of federal chief financial officer and budget teams that much more difficult.


But the good news is, they say they're looking forward to the challenge, said Jonathan Stehle, president of the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis, in an interview on In Depth with Francis Rose.

That was also the theme that emerged from a recent AABPA report, "The Road Forward, The Federal Budget and Budgeting Profession."


-Jack Moore, FederalNewsRadio.com
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The Road Forward: The Federal Budget and Budgeting Profession

In 2011, Grant Thornton joined forces with the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis (AABPA) for a first-time, online survey of 231 federal budget professionals. Survey topics included budget formulation and execution, budget and performance integration, budget cutting, Congress, budget technology, and human capital. The survey finds budgeteers primed for the coming budget battles.

Other findings include:

• Preparing and justifying budgets remains their most important job.
• Integrating budget and performance data is critical for program success but underlying difficulties make this problematic.
• Budgeteers know how to cut their budgets, but agency bureaucracies seem to have trouble executing the cuts.
• They need better budget technology to support large amounts of data.
• Analytics, crisp writing, and working cooperatively under pressure are key attributes needed by new budgeteers.
• In spite of problems and frustrations, job satisfaction is very good.

 

Download the report Here..

FedCFO.com Milestone - 1000 Posts

FedCFO.com achieved an impressive milestone today in posting the 1000th article associated with Federal financial management and the concerns of the Federal CFO community.

Since its inception in January 2005, FedCFO.com has become an important aggregator of information from the public domain pertaining to Federal financial management from sources such as: Government Accountability Office (GAO), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Financial Systems Integration Office (FSIO), U.S. Chief Financial Officer's Council (CFOC), U.S. Treasury, Association of Government Accountants (AGA), American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC), Federal Financial Managers Council (FFMC), Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB), Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), American Association for Budget and Program Analysis (AABPA), Federal Computer Week, Federal News Radio, Government Computer News, Federal Times, Government Executive, Washington Technology, CFO Magazine, Washington Post, and many more.

In addition, FedCFO.com provides a custom Google search engine for Federal financial management topics to help its users find specific topical information while excluding the extraneous data that is included with standard web searches.