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..

Personnel issues top concern for DOD financial execs

Workload pressures, aging workforce pose major challenges

Personnel issues represent the dominant concern among Defense Department financial executives, a new study found.

DOD financial executives listed workload pressures from the global war on terror and an aging workforce as overarching challenges, according to a survey released June 1 by the American Society of Military Comptrollers and Grant Thornton LLP.

Executives also said that the Defense financial community lacks clear road maps to guide professional development — despite an abundance of training programs.

Of far less concern for executives in the study were adjusting to new financial information systems and audits. On the whole, executives reported success in implementing new systems.

The survey results are based on in-person interviews with 41 executives and online interviews with 606 ASMC members. Fifty-seven percent represented the four uniformed services, 24 percent worked for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service and 19 percent were from other DOD organizations.

The survey is anticipated to be published on the Grant Thornton website on June 4th on the Global Public Sector Publications page.

-Richard Walker, FCW.com

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