A Bold Vision for Federal Financial Management

Date: May 10, 2018

At the recent conference of the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program, Treasury’s Fiscal Assistant Secretary, David Lebryk, outlined a bold vision for the future of federal financial management.

Recognizing that trust in government is shaped by a citizen’s interaction with federal programs, this vision of the future starts from the vantage point of the American citizen.

The citizen expects that the government is an efficient steward of its financial resources, the financial information provided by the government is accurate, and their financial interactions with the government are modern, seamless and secure. The vision applies the purpose and principles of the recently-released President’s Management Agenda to the government’s fiscal operations.

The vision outlines a comprehensive set of actions to be undertaken by Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service to improve the efficiency of government financial operations. They are aimed at the main financial processes that support all federal agencies and programs:

• Disbursing -- A seamless end-to-end federal payment process where the invoice that initiates the payment is received in a standard electronic form, and payment authorization and transmission is fully digital.
• Collections -- Inefficient paper-handling and lockbox processes are replaced by internet-based solutions that allow citizens to deposit fees and other payments using a variety of modern payment methods. Accounts receivable due to the government are processed centrally with optimum economies-of-scale.
• Financial Reporting – Federal financial data is made available to citizens on modern, interactive sites like USAspending.gov.   Agencies resolve accounting differences with an automated means for reporting inter-agency buy-sell transactions. The accuracy of government-wide financial data is confirmed by a clean audit opinion.
• Shared Services -- Financial management is offered as a shared service performed at optimal efficiency. Through economies of scale, standardization and state-of-the-art automation, Treasury’s Administrative Resource Center serves as a benchmark as the government’s most efficient financial processing operation.

In Treasury’s vision, these core financial operations are delivered by the Fiscal Service with the highest quality and optimum economies-of-scale. The intent is to relieve agency CFOs of these common administrative tasks so they can focus on harnessing their agencies’ financial and performance data to improve program performance. To learn more about Treasury’s plans, download a copy of “The Future of Federal Financial Management”.