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127082 1 (1985-01-01)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacvsd0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Implementing the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act Geoffrey B. Frank Mr Frank is an accountant in AFMD's Accounting Systems Audit Group. He is primarily involved in review ng implementation of the Financial Integrity Act and serves as AFMD's representative on GAO's Interdivi- sional Financial Integrity Act Task Force He is a graduale of Pennsylvania State University and a candidate for a master's degree in public administration at George Washington Univer- sity. Mr. Frank is a member of the Associalon of Government Accountants and the American Society of Public Administration Do you like challenges? Would you like a position with exciting growth potential and an opportunity to work with new state-of-the-art methods and procedures? How about an opportunity to have your planning, managerial, and interpersonal skills tested to their fullest extent by a large, complex, dynamic assignment involving hun- dreds of people all over the world? Sound like a personnel ad placed by a Silicon Valley computer firm or AT&T? Actually, it is what the ad would have looked like, had one been posted, for a position as manager of GAO's first-year review of the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act of 1982. GAO's first review of the act's im- plementation has been characterized as a learning experience. Many new, innovative approaches were required Jeffrey C. Steinhoff Mr Steinhoff is the deputy associate director in the Accounting and Financial Management Division's (AFMD) Accounting Systems Audit Group, which is responsible for directing GAO's Financial Integrity Ac' work, reviewing federal agency accounting systems, and auditing such financia management issues as debt collections and casn management. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he earned an A.B. degree in accounting. In addition Mt Steinhoff com- pleted the information systems program at the Wharton School of the University of Penn- sylvania and is a graduate oit the Federal Ex- ecutive Institute. He is a CPA (Virginia) and a member of the Associatic o+ Government Ac- countants. He has received numerous profes- sional awards. including the GAO Distinguished Service Award n 1984 not only in conducting the required work but also in managing GAO's review. This article seeks to summarize that experience and identify the lessons learned, along with their im- pact on ongoing and future work in this important area. Job Planning and Organization The Financial Integrity Act (PL. 97-255) provides, for the first time, the needed discipline on a government- wide basis to identify and remedy long- standing internal control and account- ing system problems that hamper effec- tiveness and accountability, cost the taxpayer potentially billions of dollars, and erode the public's confidence in its government. The act, whose passage was strongly supported by the Comptroller General, further develops the concept first embodied in the Ac- counting and Auditing Act of 1950 that primary responsibility for adequate systems of internal control and ac- counting rests with management. At the Comptroller General's direc- tion, GAO undertook a comprehensive review of efforts to implement the act at 22 federal departments and agen- cies, which accounted for95 percent of all federal expenditures. Specific review objectives were to * assess agencies' processes for eval- uating and improving systems of inter- nal control (section 2 of the act); * review agencies' progress toward assessing their accounting systems for compliance with the Comptroller General's principles, standards, and related requirements (section 4 of the act); and * analyze agencies' annual reports re- quired by the act. The review planning began in Octo- ber 1982, only a month after the Con- gress signed the act into law. We made two important decisions at that point: first, each division in GAO would have a role, and second, a multidivisional group would help decide our objec- tives, approaches, and staffing. Early in 1983, under Accounting and Financial Management Division (AFMD) direction, GAO formed a Finan- cial Integrity Act Implementation Work- ing Group on which each program and technical division was represented. This group, primarily through the work of several subgroups, produced several position papers outlining short- and long-term strategies for reviewing the act's implementation. We realized the magnitude of the task at hand through this group's deliberations. The group pointed out that * all GAO staff should be familiar

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