Financial Management

FFMIA Implementation Critical for Federal Accountability Gao ID: GAO-02-29 October 1, 2001

Effective management of the government's day-to-day operations has been hampered by a lack of necessary data. The Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990 calls for the modernization of federal financial management systems, including the systematic measurement of performance; the development of cost information; and the integration of program, budget, and financial information. The Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA) encourages agencies to have systems that generate timely, accurate, and useful information with which to make informed decisions and to ensure accountability on an ongoing basis. Auditors for 19 of the 24 CFO Act agencies reported that their agencies' financial management systems did not comply substantially with FFMIA requirements, compared to 21 agencies reported as not being substantially compliant for 1999. The auditors for five CFO Act agencies reported no instances in which the agencies' systems did not substantially comply with FFMIA. These auditors, however, did not definitively state whether the agencies' financial management systems substantially complied with FFMIA. FFMIA requires agencies to prepare remediation plans to overcome financial management systems problems. These plans have improved over the fiscal year 1998 plans; however, further enhancements are needed.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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