Office of the Chief Financial Officer
The Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO) provides professional financial management services, guidance, and innovative solutions to its customers. The OCFO’s primary purpose is to support and enhance GSA’s ability to achieve its objectives and improve Agency-wide financial management performance. The OCFO’s efforts focus on creating and optimizing value at least cost by combining and interpreting financial and program data to assist managers in making sound business decisions. The OCFO develops overall Agency policies and procedures for budget administration, planning and performance measurement, financial reporting, management and internal controls, and financial management systems.
Performance Highlights
GSA BUDGET DEVELOPMENT:
The OCFO made major improvements to the GSA Performance Management Process (PMP) in FY 2007, significantly improving its utility in formulating the FY 2009 GSA Budget Submission. Most notably, the OCFO required that all proposed FY 2009 budget initiatives have a positive return on investment and deliver a quantifiable performance. Using the improved PMP process, the OCFO provided the GSA Administrator with comprehensive, data driven financial and performance analysis, allowing her to make informed budget decisions. As a result, GSA delivered an FY 2009 budget submission to OMB that was both within OMB’s guidance and fully consistent with the Administrator’s policy and fiscal goals.
In its role as the Controller for GSA’s General Management and Administration (GM&A) functions, the OCFO worked hard to support the Administrator’s goal of reducing the cost of services provided to GSA’s customers. Providing common support functions such as human resources, financial management, and information management, centrally to all GSA organizations significantly reduces their total cost to the Agency. Through aggressive application of the PMP and extensive, cooperative interaction with the GM&A service providers, the OCFO was able to reduce GM&A costs in the FY 2007 budget by over $15 million from FY 2006.
ORGANIZATION AND PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS:
In FY 2007, the OCFO continued to evolve as a shared service provider of financial management services to customer agencies and commissions. The OCFO’s Federal Integrated Solutions Center (FISC) provides integrated shared services that enhance effectiveness, improve efficiency, and reduce risk for Federal government agencies, enabling them to focus on their core missions. The OCFO’s FY 2007 focus was on standing up FISC services and establishing partnerships with small to mid-sized agencies to deliver these services. The OCFO’s long-term goal is for the FISC to become the leading provider of expert, integrated process, technology, and management solutions to Federal government agencies.
Financial transaction and system operations are at the core of the services that the OCFO delivers. The OCFO delivers these services both internally to GSA and externally to other governmental agencies and commissions. Pursuant to its goal to be a government-wide leader in these business offerings, the OCFO is working to achieve efficiencies by streamlining financial transaction processing at its OCFO financial operation centers. During FY 2007, the OCFO completed an initiative to map out all of the processes required to perform account receivable, account payable, asset management, cash and disbursement operations, and financial reporting services. This initiative identified a number of potential process improvements for study and implementation during FY 2008.
Another key financial initiative was the creation of the OCFO’s Executive Scorecard. To ensure that GSA is managing its customer’s money in full compliance with all statutory requirements, the OCFO began producing aging reports on Unfilled Customer Orders, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Obligations, and Charge Card logging. These reports were consolidated into a monthly Executive Scorecard that helps focus GSA senior management on older and possibly invalid data residing in GSA systems. The scorecard provides managers with an unambiguous snapshot on current organization performance and indicates where management attention should be focused to prevent future problems. The Executive Scorecard has successfully focused GSA management resources on identifying errant data and purging it from GSA, helping to ensure the financial integrity of GSA and its customers.
In the area of financial management systems, the OCFO is working to implement a world-class shared services financial system enterprise that meets customer needs and positions GSA to provide efficient and effective IT services, today and for the long term. Throughout FY 2007, the OCFO worked to unify GSA financial management systems operations through Financial Management Enterprise Architecture (FMEA), replace its remaining legacy financial systems modules, simplify financial management information access, and offer a high-quality delivery of services that meets GSA customer requirements. As part of its continuing effort to modernize GSA’s financial applications, the OCFO implemented cost-allocation, vendor self-service, and e-Travel modules, with implementation of E-Authentication planned for the near future. In addition, final planning and acquisitions are underway for two major functional areas—billing and accounts receivable, and asset management. Much of the required development and planning work was completed in FY 2007, positioning GSA to begin implementation in FY 2008. The OCFO also worked diligently to ensure that GSA was in full compliance with all Federal financial management systems requirements. A significant step was implementation of a major version upgrade to GSA’s financial management commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application to help maintain Financial System Integration Office (FSIO) compliance.
INTERNAL CONTROLS AND AUDITS:
The OCFO made a major effort in FY 2007 to implement the latest OMB Circular A-123 policy management and internal control requirements throughout GSA’s nationwide programs. To achieve these new mandatory government-wide requirements, the OCFO expanded the process of conducting risk assessments for all GSA programs, incorporating risk-based testing into internal control reviews, and tracking implementation of internal control review recommendations. In addition, the OCFO established a fully functional internal control database, providing all GSA employees with a central location to electronically complete assurance statements, risk assessments, and internal control reviews. The OCFO also significantly improved its automated system for tracking audits and required follow-up actions. As a result, GSA was able to meet all of its audit deadlines on time in FY 2007.
The following section presents the OCFO performance by GSA strategic goals.