Recovery Board opens next frontier in financial accountability

A funny thing happened when Congress approved the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009.

While politicians debated whether in was wise to invest more than $804 billion in an effort to stimulate the economy, lawmakers added a provision to the bill giving the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, an independent, non-partisan, non-political agency, oversight of the funds.

The "RAT Board" had two goals. One was to provide transparency over the Recovery money, and the other was to root out fraud, waste and mismanagement in the spending of those funds.

Four years later, debate may continue about the success or failure of the Recovery Act. But many consider the RAT Board to be a pioneer in government accountability and transparency.

Federal News Radio's week-long, on-air and online series, "Rise of the Money People: Financial management moves front and center as agencies make the final assault on wasted billions ," focuses on the methods and tools agencies employ in rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government spending.

-Michael O'Connell, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Federal News Radio coverage of the 2013 AGA National Leadership Conference

The Association of Government Accountants' National Leadership Conference brings together financial-management experts from across government to share best practices and to discuss the latest management and accountability techniques.

The 2013 Association of Government Accountants National Leadership Conference was held Feb. 12-13 in Washington, D.C. Federal News Radio attended the event and spoke with several of the key speakers ahead of their respective panel discussions.

- FederalNewsRadio.com
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Recovery Board testing accountability tools in the cloud

WILLIAMSBURG, Va.-- The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board had so much success moving Recovery.gov to the cloud, it is looking there again to give agencies a new set of accountability tools.

Shawn Kingsberry, the board's chief information officer and assistant director for technology, said about four agencies are testing a new suite of data-analysis software to ensure Recovery Act funds are not being subject to waste, fraud or abuse.

The Recovery Board is working with several agencies to test out these accountability tools in the cloud. The tools include data- analysis software that can detect data anomalies on contracts, grants and loans issued with stimulus funding.  Agencies submit award or proposed award data to the board. The board then uses these tools to find potential issues with the vendor and passes that information back to the awarding agency. The agency can then decide what steps to take next.

Kingsberry said agencies can and should take a pause to make sure the funds are not falling victim to waste, fraud or abuse.

The Recovery Board's experience with putting software in the cloud has been successful. It first moved its site to the public cloud in April 2010.

Kingsberry said the board saved $750,000 by using Amazon Web Services and moved that money into mission needs to detect waste, fraud and abuse.

With the audit tools, the board will follow a similar path — starting small in the board's own data center to create the baseline and then moving it to the cloud, Kingsberry said.

-Jason Miller, FederalNewsRadio.com
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Today's GAO Publication

Government Transparency: Efforts to Improve Information on Federal Spending, by Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
GAO-12-913T, July 18.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-913T
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592634.pdf