Twenty agencies big and small were recently noted for top-notch financial and performance reporting by the Association of Government Accountants. The “Certificate of Excellence in Accountability Reporting” (CEAR) singles out “high-quality Performance and Accountability Reports (PARs) and Annual Financial Reports (AFRs) that effectively illustrate and assess financial and program performance, accomplishments and challenges, cost and accountability,” the accountants association said in a news release. The association also spotlights the teams of dedicated federal professionals who (often unsung) put the reports together. “Given the fiscal status of the United States government and the public’s perceptions about government fiscal accountability and transparency,…
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SAN DIEGO| It’s been more than a year since President Obama formally kicked off the “Campaign to Cut Waste” in a June 2011 executive order. Some agencies, though, seem to be taking the charge to reduce administrative costs more seriously than others, a newly released survey of chief financial officers and other federal financial managers indicates. Although 45 percent of respondents said they have been getting “good results” from the campaign, almost as many (44 percent) said they had little to report, were just getting started, had laid plans to start, or (uh-oh) hadn’t done anything, according to the unscientific survey, sponsored by the Association…
SAN DIEGO | Politicians of all stripes pay homage to the Greatest Generation, as newsman Tom Brokaw dubbed the men and women who endured the Great Depression, helped win World War II, and went on create the most prosperous society the world had ever known. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., offered a less reverential footnote today, attributing the origins of today’s fiscal crisis to entitlement programs fostered by some of those same people. “The Greatest Generation created many of what the private sector would call Ponzi schemes,” Issa said at an Association of Government Accountants conference here. “They created Social Security, they created Medicare on…
SAN DIEGO | Not that there was much doubt on this score, but Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., this morning confirmed that Congress won’t act to head off a U.S. Postal Service default on a $5.5 billion payment into a retiree health care fund that is legally due Wednesday. The default “will occur,” said Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and is the lead sponsor of a USPS overhaul bill. The payment was originally due last September, but Congress pushed back the deadline until Aug. 1. Issa’s comments came in an interview after he spoke at an Association of Government Accountants conference here.…
Two small signs this month of how feds are adjusting to the prospect of tight money. One comes from the pages of the Federal Register, where last week, the National Agricultural Statistics Service announced that it is both suspending its July sheep and goat survey and indefinitely postponing its Census of Aquaculture and a separate land ownership survey “due to budgetary cutbacks.” The notice doesn’t say how much money is involved; NASS officials could not be reached for comment Friday. The other is a nugget from an Association of Government Accountants report this month on technology trends. What’s driving tech adoption nowdays? The potential to save…