The AGA Weblog

"Think Big! Act Courageously! Make a Difference!"

By: William Morehead, Ph.D., CGFM

William Morehead, Ph.D., CGFM, a member of AGA’s Jackson Chapter, is the chair of Accountancy, Computer Information Systems and Finance at Delta State University in Cleveland, MS. He is AGA’s National President-Elect.

Focusing on my proposed presidential theme, I want to continue the conversation from last month regarding the accounting faculty shortage and challenges in higher education as it relates to government financial management.

You may be unaware that we have an accounting faculty shortage in our colleges and universities throughout the U.S.—this problem is serious and is impacting the quality and deliverance of our accounting education programs. The AICPA has established a substantial scholarship focusing specifically on tax and audit professionals; my question to you, “How should AGA help the effort?”

The shortage of governmental accounting professors is extreme. In my 13 years of teaching at the senior college level, I have not seen one governmental accounting textbook mention AGA. We professors have challenges in obtaining quality materials for use in governmental accounting classes. Last month I proposed I would, as president, establish an AGA task force and/or work with our Corporate Partnership Advisory Group (CPAG) members to research the faculty shortage and make recommendations on ways to overcome it. We had a good response to this idea.

Following the feedback, questions and subsequent conversations with several individuals, I propose we expand the purpose of the task force to include several education issues.

Governmental accounting faculty shortage:
• Possible “bridge” programs to connect government financial management professionals to academia.
• Scholarships for interested doctoral students.
• Partnerships with CPAG members to consider endowing government financial management professorships.
Explore publishing AGA’s own government financial management textbooks and materials for classroom use:
• Consider adapting the GFM materials into governmental accounting textbooks.
• Continue improving the use of GFM materials in the classroom (at least three universities are already doing so).
• Use the CPAG research reports in the classroom (at least one university is already doing so).
• Market our existing (and new) materials to the governmental accounting faculty throughout the country.
• Discuss the preparation and use of AGA’s Citizen-Centric Reports, Service Efforts and Accomplishments reports, and performance measures in the classroom.

AGA can “Think Big” and partner with other organizations and foundations with similar goals—Advancing Government Accountability—to tackle these issues impacting our government financial management community. Such a partnership will allow AGA to “Act Courageously” and “Make a Difference” in the future of our profession through the classroom.

Tackling these items will be challenging! However, I know AGA is up for the challenge! What are your thoughts?

Transparency is the Battle Cry…Is the U.S. Government Ready to Deliver?

By: Lisa Miller

Lisa Miller is the president of Dynaxys LLC, which offers strategic and tactical accounting solutions. She was a director in the federal consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and served in senior management positions at the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She led the first U.S. government implementation of XBRL to improve legacy system interoperability.

In the turmoil that we saw last week in the financial markets, one resounding note in the cacophony of voices was the failure in transparency. Neither the private sector nor the regulators understood the complexity of what had occurred or why. Government buy-outs represent only a short-term solution. In contrast, transparency is a long-term preventive.

Markets, technology and global operations are advancing so rapidly and in so many new ways that government must take steps to understand how the markets are functioning if it is to provide effective regulation. This includes, for example, the scope of business activity, the complexities of the market operations, the roles of the various players and the risks being assumed. Data from a wide variety of sources needs to be available in ways that can quickly and easily be shared with all the stakeholders in the market, including the public—thousands of people with equal access to information, evaluating from their own perspective or the government’s.

XBRL can help the government to deliver transparency

XBRL is an international standard for automated processing of business information by computer software, cutting out labor-intensive and costly processes of manual re-entry and comparison across multiple financial systems. Computers can treat XBRL data "intelligently." They can recognize the information in an XBRL document, select it, analyze it, store it, exchange it with other computer systems and present it automatically in a variety of ways for users. XBRL enables dramatic savings in time and cost while producing standardized, accurate results that can be easily shared. Human effort can switch to higher, more value-added aspects of analysis, review, reporting and decision-making. In this way, analysts can save effort, greatly simplify the selection and comparison of data, and deepen the analyses.

By itself, XBRL does not ensure transparency but it provides the necessary platform on which transparency can be built. For example, using XBRL enables analysts, the regulators or the public to quickly identify missing vital information that sends up red flags. Failure to standardize data from disparate sources and give equal access to a host of users leads to delays in critical analysis and decision-making, including the very data mining that can be used to course correct in a real-time global marketplace—whether by the market itself or by market regulators.

Almost every industry has used some form of standardization to revolutionize performance—transportation (shipping containers, for example), retail (bar codes, for example). And now with XBRL, standardization is available for data.

In fact, there is evidence that the U.S. is moving slowly in this direction, using XBRL surgically with excellent results. The FDIC used XBRL to modernize bank system data collection leading to dramatic improvements in data quality and significant time and money savings. Hopefully by the time this blog is published, the SEC will have issued its final rule establishing an XBRL filing program for publicly traded companies. With digital disclosure and increasing transparency, information will be available directly to the public for many more eyes to see—better, faster, cheaper—a large step toward transparency.

Non-federal government officials also see the writing on the wall…

“Governments today compete for capital around the globe electronically. Our XBRL investments in an efficient global marketplace today will help sow the seeds for lower interest costs tomorrow,” said the Oregon State Controller John J. Radford, CGFM, CIA, CFE.

Internationally, there are many implementations—stock exchanges, tax collectors, central banks and regulators. The Netherlands is well along with a broad XBRL implementation with an estimated savings of $350 million. Australia’s implementation is in progress with six or more deployments and has moved within the public sector to embrace XBRL.

But we are moving at a snail’s pace. If we know the answer, why isn’t our government enforcing the solution?

Clearly we need more champions—like Radford and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox—executives that understand and promote XBRL to bring transparency into the market and to operations. The AGA is yet another voice in support. Others are needed.

I leave the reader with these questions.

How can we move to overcome governmental inertia and get adoption started?
What should be the priorities for advancing XBRL in the government sector?
What more can the AGA and members do to make this happen?

Protecting the Borders

AGA's Third Annual Internal Control & Fraud Conference concluded with an eye-opening presentation by David V. Aguilar, Chief, Office of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Charged with protecting 7,000 square miles of our nation's borders, Aguilar oversees a growing work force of 17,000. That number is expected to swell to 20,000 by 2009. Prior to becoming the chief, he oversaw the Border Patrol's operations in Tucson, AZ, a sector he calls "the center of the Border Patrol universe."

He said the American public reads daily about the ongoing efforts of the Border Patrol, and images that come to mind are fences, illegal immigration deterrence, narcotics deterrence and other roles. "Things changed for all of us on September 11, 2001," Aguilar said.

Because of the sizable assets assigned to the Border Patrol, he said the agency is a "target-rich" source for the inspector general community, but he welcomes the scrutiny. "It's a good thing."

It's critical for people to stop thinking of the Border Patrol as strictly the stopper of illegal aliens. "We are more about keeping people out who plot every day to come in and disrupt our way of life."

The essential elements to succeeding in this mission are the right personnel, technology and infrastructure. "The bad people looking to do us harm adjust to our efforts," he said, adding that protection doesn't begin and end at the borders.

Since taking office as chief in 2004, Aguilar is proud of the centralization that has occurred within the agency. In his former role, he said, he worked together with other field chiefs, but efforts were fragmented. "Now we work as one team focusing on one goal—protecting our nation's borders."

He talked about the difference between the needs on the northern and southern borders and offered the interesting statistic that 90 percent of Canada's population lives within 100 air miles of the U.S. border. This presents a staggering challenge to the Border Patrol. That said, however, 98 percent of the agency's efforts are focused on the southern border.

The centralized efforts are having real results. Arrests are down from 1.6 million to 876,700 for fiscal year 2007. Marijuana seizures are up 56 percent since 2001. He worries that falling arrest numbers will result in people thinking fewer resources are needed to do the work of the Border Patrol. That is not the case, he said.

"We've started and we're moving forward," he said, noting the enormous effort that has occurred since Sept. 11 to secure the nation's borders. "It's a continuing challenge—managing change."

—Marie S. Force

Transition and the Accountability Community

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General and conference technical committee co-chair Richard L. Skinner opened the second day of AGA's Third Annual Internal Control and Fraud Conference with an interactive discussion about the role the accountability community needs to play in the upcoming transition—at the federal, state and local levels.

"It's a pivotal year for the accountability community," Skinner said, adding that he is apolitical and doesn't support either presidential candidate but will serve whomever is elected. Regardless of who is elected, he said, the one thing the work force can count on is change. He offered the following list of areas where change is all but assured:
• Transparency
• Accountability (he joked about Barack Obama's "SWAT" team that will hold his managers accountable and fire under-performers, calling the term "SWAT" scary.)
• Trust in government. "We have to be able to trust in our government to do the right thing," Skinner said.
• Changes to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) and Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) programs, which both candidates have referred to as "broken."
• Promises for more grants for state and local governments.
• Less reliance on contractors.
• More investment in contract management and oversight, something Congress has also advocated.
• Control costs and eliminate redundancy.
• Improper payments—control the $55 billion a year in wasteful spending.

"The problem we have," Skinner said, "is the landscape in which (the new president) will enter. No one has ever come into office with a budget deficit like the one we have now." We're going to need a reality check to fund all the promises both candidates are making, he said. Out-of-control costs in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and health care have to be contained along with transportation costs, reliance on foreign oil and the environmental impact of excessive gas usage.

To compound matters, one-third of the federal work force is eligible for retirement, which will result in a "devastating loss of the intelligence base." The challenges facing the accountability community are enormous, Skinner said. "We can sit back and watch what happens or we can become players. I think we have to stand up and be players." He referred to the government reengineering effort espoused by the Clinton-Gore administration, during which the accountability community sat back and waited to see what would happen. "Our areas were all cut," Skinner said. "We did not participate in the transition in an aggressive, assertive manner." When the new transition teams come in—at the federal and state levels—we need to be at the table to let them know the value we bring, he said.

Accountability professionals will be in competition with program managers, he warned, adding that we have to show the new team that we can help to maximize the use of the few dollars we have left to run the government. He bemoaned the lack of a strong lobbying effort on behalf of the accountability community and urged attendees to begin thinking collectively.

At the Department of Homeland Security, Skinner said real progress is being made in both the structure and functionality of the department as well as its ability to respond quickly to disasters. Since Hurricane Katrina, he's seen a redefinition of emergency management coordination and an excellent effort to respond in a more timely manner. Fraud exists in every program, but the bigger worry is waste when 10 times what is needed is sent to a disaster area, he said. "In our zeal to show the public we're responsive, we end up spending millions later to get it all back," Skinner said.

He called for a reinvigoration of the goals of the GPRA. After spending billions of dollars on programs, the Department of Homeland Security can't answer the very basic question—are we more secure than we were five years ago? The bad guys only have to be right once, he said, but we have to be right 100 percent of the time. The department doesn't have the performance matrices in place to ask where have we been, where are we now and where are we going. The lack of subsequent attacks after 9-11 isn't an indication of how secure we are, he said.

Topping the list of DHS priorities are:
• Maritime security
• Sharing of intelligence
• IT systems that don't talk to each other
• Security along the 7,000 square miles of border, something Skinner calls an "unbelievable challenge"
• Disaster recovery
• Protecting the food system
• Protecting the utility grid
• Enforcing immigration laws

"These are the things the inspector general has the responsibility to make known to the new administration," Skinner said.

—Marie S. Force

The Anatomy of Ethical Slips in Government

AGA Hall of Fame Speaker Marianne Jennings, JD, professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University, addressed the Internal Control and Fraud Conference Monday afternoon, talking about the variety of ways people manage to justify unethical behavior.

She began by saying that the No. 1 thing Arizona accountants were disciplined for in 2006 was lying about their ethics requirement. With a wry, dry delivery style, Jennings presented one case after another of bribery, corruption and conflict of interest. "These are not close calls," Jennings said. "Bribery isn't nuanced."

Referring to a number of high-profile examples of public officials committing ethical breaches, she said, "It's been a record year for ethical breaches in 2007-2008. My father always tells me that he believes I'm in a growth industry."

She talked about pitcher Roger Clemens, who allegedly lied to investigators looking into steroid abuse in major league baseball, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, brought down by a prostitution scandal, and the New England Patriots, caught filming other teams' signals and responded with "everyone does it."

Jennings expressed disappointment in the federal inspector general community, which has been beset by a series of scandals over the last year that resulted in a number of resignations. "These are the guards who throw down the flag and investigate. We lost a number of them in the last year, and that worries me."

Embezzlement, fraud, misuse of government property, conflicts of interest, bribery, manipulating reports and data, covering up unfavorable information—none of these things are close calls in the ethics world. Issues plaguing the financial market can be remedied, she said, "But if there's corruption in government, we're fooling around with some pretty fundamental things."

Often after a particularly egregious breach, people will tell you their intent was to save their company from major losses or embarrassment, which is a way to justify unethical behavior. However, Jennings said, this kind of justification can lead to anarchy if everyone feels it's OK to skirt the basic rules of society.

She encourages her students to come up with a credo—a line they won't cross no matter what. They write their credos on cards that she encourages them to take with them into the work world. One student called her about 18 months ago to tell her he still has his card and that she "bothers him" from time to time. Jennings took that as the highest form of compliment.

After three decades as a professor, she has often been offered an endowed chair that would mean more money, prestige and staff to assist her, but she has refused because, "I want to have the right to have a big mouth." She said a friend, who was once the Enron chair of ethics, has taken a healthy dose of abuse from his colleagues in the wake of Enron's collapse.

"Watch for slippage," she cautioned. Have a chalk line you won't cross. If you keep going back and forth across the line, the line grows fuzzy.

She also recommends that we reward people who used to be known as "snitches." We're not doing enough to protect people who throw down the flag, but these are the people we should be rewarding, she said. Often these people aren't terminated so much as "flatlined" in an organization as a form of punishment for speaking out about ethical breaches. "It's what you do, not what you say that's critical." Twenty-five percent of employees believe that managers retaliate against employees who report misconduct. If there's a disconnect between what you say and do, you won't get the information you need from the people who have it.

Jennings said her favorite statistic is that 99 percent of us believe we are the most ethical person in our workplace. However, she has noticed that the more education people have, the more money they make and the higher their position, the less likely they are to see the bright line between right and wrong.

Ethics is awkward. People like to refer to the acceptable gray area. "We tend to say this most often when the situation isn't gray at all."

—Marie S. Force

Collaboration Brings Results

Brian Miller, JD, inspector general at the U.S. General Services Administration, was Monday's second speaker at AGA's Internal Control & Fraud Conference in Phoenix. He discussed the Procurement Fraud Task Force, launched in 2006 as a collaborative effort across the federal government to leverage resources in the fight against procurement fraud.

Areas covered by the task force include, but are not limited to, defective pricing, product substitution, misuse of classified information in procurement, false claims and grant fraud.

Prior to his role as an inspector general, Miller was an assistant U.S. attorney, prosecuting a wide variety of crimes. He said there's a big difference between prosecuting a drug case where you only have to show a connection between the defendant and the drugs and a procurement fraud case where you have to prove intent. It's not enough, he said, to tie the individual to the fraudulent transaction. You also have to show intent and reckless disregard. "That makes it a much more difficult case," Miller said because it requires proving thoughts.

However, perpetrators of these types of crime often plan them in advance. They are not "heat of the moment" crimes, thus there is often a paper trail—if you know where to look. It's not enough, he said, for organizations to have a code of ethics and to think that's all you need to deter fraud. He referred to a November 2001 letter from Kenneth Lay espousing Enron's sterling ethical environment.

Miller called procurement fraud "crimes against the integrity of the process" and called on the honor system to help ferret them out. "To make it work," he said, "you have to enforce the violations." Violations include lying under oath, making false statements, obstructing audits and destruction of corporate records, which is now forbidden under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. "You can't have an honor system if people cheat," Miller said.

He said the task force has committees working in a variety of areas to address the subject from all corners. Committees include: grant fraud, information sharing, intelligence (looking at the special challenges of dealing with classified information), international, legislative (which scored a success with the new FAR rule that requires contractors with more than $5 million in contracts to report overpayments and crimes to inspectors general), private sector outreach and training. Regional working groups led by U.S. attorneys are focusing on procurement fraud across the United States by sharing leads and information. Since the task force was created, 360 procurement fraud cases have been adjudicated.

Miller talked about how important e-mail has become to this process. "I call it God's gift to prosecutors because people say the darndest things in an e-mail." He cited one example in which someone wrote in an e-mail, "Don't tell Medicare about this," and another that said, "If the SEC finds out about this, we're in big trouble." To which the recipient replied, "If the FBI finds out, we're out the window."

With a big smile, Miller said, "E-mail is a wonderful thing."

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser Kicks Off AGA's Internal Control and Fraud Conference

Mayor Mark Funkhouser said Monday morning that he's all about following the money in his new role, after spending 18 years as Kansas City, MO's auditor. In a session titled, "Smart with the Money: Governance and Control in a Time of Financial Crisis," Funkhouser outlined the systemic problems plaguing his diverse, multi-cultural city. His presentation led off AGA's Third Annual Internal Control & Fraud Conference in Phoenix, AZ.

Elected on a platform that went something like this: "We're still going to spend the money, we're just going to spend it smarter," Funkhouser is challenged every day in trying to live up to that promise in a city that is all about the "deal of the day." A city that has invested more than a billion dollars in stadiums for its football and baseball teams faces a crumbling infrastructure and was on the brink of financial failure when he took office. It was so bad, he said, he wondered if officials would be able to make payroll. They have since stepped back from that precipice by reforming budget practices and cutting waste wherever they can find it.

After 18 years of auditing the city and after teaching and studying government, he considered himself an expert when he took office. He has since found out otherwise. At the core of his city's financial issues is a failure to control costs and a series of out-of-control deals with developers that don't benefit the city. For instance, the city funds the local zoo, which is a private enterprise. Funkhouser fought against funding for the zoo in this year's budget because he felt the money could be better spent on new police officers to combat a growing violent crime wave. He was overruled and the city gave more than $4 million to the zoo. He calls these policies "toys for the rich."

When asked what keeps him awake at night, he says debt service. With Kansas City more than $2.6 billion in debt and the property tax base eroding as residents flee the city, he worries about funding future police and fire department needs. He has succeeded in instituting a debt policy that has put some controls on deals that don't benefit the city. He comically related a story that one of his advisers shared: People who used to rob the till with both hands are annoyed by Funkhouser because now they have to use one of those hands to fight him off, which means they can only take half as much money as they used to. "And yes, they are annoyed with me." Still, he counts that shift from business as usual as a success. "I'm not paying sticker price for everything that comes in the door."

He sees proper governance as critical to his role as mayor. The policy choices he makes every day are "city-shaping" decisions. If you make the wrong decision, nothing can save you. This is the structure whereby citizens assert control. It is how democracy gets translated into decisions, and the misuse of public funds derails all progress. Often, he said, finance professionals tend to look at "retail" fraud, such as improper purchases, when they should be looking at the more encompassing "wholesale" fraud.

Funkhouser is also concerned about the failure of the Kansas City government to invest in its personnel. Whenever they do make a staff investment, they are berated in the media for wasting public money. It's a Catch 22 because with only five CPAs in the entire government, mistakes are going to happen. That's how the city ended up with a $1.04 million error in the closing of last year's books. "So the technical competence just isn't there," Funkhouser said, "and we haven't invested in it." He hopes to change that during his term.

As part of the strategic direction for the city, Funkhouser believes that he has to convince the middle class to stay or return to ensure the city's long-term survival. "You have to take care of the money to take care of the people," he said. "If you don't take care of the money, nothing else you do matters."

One thing he was unprepared for when he ran for mayor was the vitriol of modern politics, which has focused in equal parts on Funkhouser and his wife, who has been formally banned from City Hall and has been the subject of 90 unflattering newspaper articles. "Are we having fun yet?" he asked in jest. The answer: No. "It's very, very nasty." It occurred to him recently that he's had just one fun day since he took office and that was the day a tornado ripped through the city. He asked the fire chief what he should be doing, to which the chief replied, go out and talk to people. So that's what Funkhouser did, and he was stunned that citizens who'd lost everything were happy to see him. After spending hours visiting with the victims, he took a helicopter ride to view the destruction from the air. Looking down, he saw public works removing downed branches and public safety officers aiding in rescue and crowd control. "That was a city that works, and that was the best day I've had as mayor."

—By: Marie S. Force

Preparing to Govern: When Candidate Becomes President

By: Katie Malague

Katie Malague is a senior program manager with the Partnership for Public Service.

This winter, for only the second time in 16 years, the White House will get a new inhabitant. During the primary campaign season—which included nearly 50 debates—candidates rarely discussed federal management. Yet, the next president’s success rests largely on his ability to effectively manage federal operations, with the help of a highly skilled management team. Amid tremendous pressure to score major policy victories in the first 100 days, the new administration must also quickly invest in government’s long-term organizational health.

Once in office, the new president will essentially become the CEO of the nation’s largest employer—our federal government, with 1.9 million people. But unlike other new CEOs, he’ll inherit an organization with a more complex, some might say daunting, mission—one that affects every American. Whether preventing tainted toys from reaching our shelves and tainted food from reaching our tables or rescuing hurricane victims from their homes and financial institutions from ruin, it’s a role with unparalleled management challenges.

Getting the “people piece” right won’t be easy or glamorous. Despite repeated government reform efforts, federal management challenges persist. To improve government performance, the next administration should focus on four components of an effective work force: the right talent, an engaged work force, strong leadership and public support. Priorities that will promote meaningful reform include:

Get the people piece right. Congress usually tries to fix government by reshuffling the organizational charts. As the 9/11 Commission said, “The quality of the people is more important than the quality of the wiring diagrams.” The next administration should focus on getting the right talent into government both in our civil service and in its roughly 4,000 presidential appointments. A centerpiece of the strategy should be a renewed call to service as the beginning of a drive to restore prestige to government.

Pick professionals, not politicos. Some of the most important posts the next administration will fill are senior management posts such as chief financial officers, chief information officers and chief human capital officers. These non-ideological positions should be filled with management experts, and, to be effective, they’ll need to be a core part of each agency’s leadership team.

Build upon programmatic and operational successes. The next administration should resist the temptation to “wipe the slate clean.” Instead, the incoming team should assess what programs are working, and then build and improve on those efforts. This will prevent additional skepticism and provide for early wins.

Fix the broken hiring process. The federal hiring system should be fundamentally rethought so that adherence to long-standing federal public policy goals, such as merit-based selection and veterans’ preference, continue to be met while the government substantially improves its ability to attract the best possible talent.

Update our nation’s compensation and classification system. The General Schedule pay and classification system should be phased out in favor of a more market-based and performance-oriented compensation system. The new pay system must be preceded by a transparent and credible performance management system for employees and should create a level playing field for all agencies by providing a common set of guidelines and requirements.

Develop measurements to promote accountability. It’s hard to change what you can’t measure or fix what you don’t know is broken. To be successful, the next administration must develop meaningful ways to see what’s working and what isn’t. Best practices can be replicated across government, and exposed trouble spots can be confronted before they become public problems of Katrina proportion.

Prepare incoming presidential appointees for federal leadership. With an average tenure of less than two years, political appointees can’t afford to learn the ropes gradually through trial and error. They should receive orientation regarding government operations, laws and policies immediately upon assuming their position and thereafter, as needed, throughout their time in government.

Make management a priority from the top. Senior leaders will not see government reform as a priority unless it is a priority for the president. The president must make it clear to political appointees and civil servants that these management issues are central to achieving his goals.

Getting the Skinny on Reporting Government Performance

By: Evie Barry

Evie Barry is AGA's director of Performance Reporting.

The West Coast has been involved in performance management and reporting for years and the notion has been moving slowly eastward. Portland, OR, has been producing performance reports for more than 15 years and continues to fine-tune its report in these changing times. Don’t know much about how to get started in reporting your government’s performance? Attend AGA’s Performance Management Conference in Seattle to be in the know.

Thanks to the Alfred E. Sloan Foundation, AGA has been able to offer this conference at the same registration fee as last year. For $395 for AGA members and $445 for nonmembers, you can receive 14 hours of continuing professional education. Scheduled for Oct. 27–28, 2008, the conference offers topics that are oriented to state and local governments, but we are adding a federal track that deals with issues that will be of interest to a new administration.

This is the fourth year for AGA’s Performance Management Conference, and it promises to be one of the most interesting, useful and comprehensive. First, we have a cadre of excellent keynote speakers including our host, Ron Sims, County Executive for King County, WA; Robert Attmore, CGFM, CPA, Chair, Governmental Accounting Standards Board; Robert Shea, Associate Director for Administration and Government Performance, U.S. Office of Management and Budget; Brian Sonntag, Washington State’s Auditor and Ken Smith, Ph.D., CPA, of Willamette University. We will also have the privilege to hear from Harry Hatry, Urban Institute, and Paul Posner, George Mason University, as they share with us their successes and frustrations in promoting government performance during the last 30 years. What a story!

Take advantage of the expertise these West Coast governments have to offer. Sessions will include speakers from King County, WA; Vancouver, WA; Portland, OR; and the state of Washington. Also offered is a session that includes representatives from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Nashville-Davidson County, TN, as they share their experiences as first-time preparers in a session called, “How to Get Started.” Learn how to "Sustain a Performance Management System" from two governments that have continued to improve their reports so that they become more useful in informing the public and communicating data to make tough budget decisions. Don’t know much about "Community Indicators" and "Benchmarking" and "Getting Citizens Engaged"? We have session experts who should be able to answer your questions. Have you heard about AGA’s Citizen-Centric Reporting Program? We’ve got a session on that too. Other sessions of interest are:

• What’s New with Performance Reporting Programs?
• Auditors Working with Management to Advance Performance Management
• Lessons Learned for the Next Administration
• Activity-Based Costing and Performance Management
• Performance Based Management Reporting—Integrating Financial and Performance Information
• The Value of Employee Engagement
• Performance Management in Reporting Technology

Government accountability and transparency are themes that have resonated through campaigns, whether they be on the local level or the national stage. Governments working toward these goals need reliable data and the ability to communicate financial information effectively. Performance measurement is not a panacea but a tool to provide data so that managers can manage without operating in the dark. With data that shows trends and anomalies, more informed choices can be made by management and governing bodies. Agencies that use data to analyze performance and gauge progress—and then share that information—can ultimately reap the benefits of being a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Does your government measure performance? Do you think performance measures improve transparency and accountability? Does the information help program managers make better decisions?

Digital Preservation

By: Robert Horton

Robert Horton is the director of the Library, Publications and Collections Division of the Minnesota Historical Society.

There are a lot of questions about how to preserve digital content. Some of them are getting easier to answer—for example, the popularity of open source applications, the growing use of non-proprietary formats such as XML and the decreasing costs of storage all significantly lower the barriers to preservation over time, principally by making technological obsolescence a less pressing issue.

But lowered barriers don’t mean that preservation will be easy or cheap—just possible. We still don’t do a very good job of preserving digital content and, more important, we don’t have a really good, successful model at hand. This is not a new problem. We have already experienced massive losses of valuable information resources. Basically, every medium developed in the 20th century has overwhelmed our preservation capacities. If we examine our track record with preserving film, radio, audio or television resources, we’ll see the loss of a huge percentage of the content (for a discussion, see the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ recent publication, The Digital Dilemma).

So when we think about how to preserve digital content, we know what to expect: Any successful program will have to include conversion, as one storage medium replaces another; migration, as data formats evolve; innovation, to enhance the value of content as new applications arrive on the market; and investment, as all of these efforts will demand staff, money and time.

Efforts on that scale will demand a compelling business case. That is especially true for government entities; pressed by budget deficits, increasing demands for services and higher expectations from citizens, they have to establish priorities. Accountability is one argument—government needs to provide access to its records in order to justify its actions and decisions to voters, legislators, auditors and, internally, management. Both candidates for president have called for greater transparency in government, noting that technology now allows for much greater access to government information. Risk management is another—the costs of litigation and particularly of e-discovery require government to think carefully about managing its electronic records.

Perhaps the most important argument for investing in digital preservation is use. Current technology has greatly enhanced the value of digital content. We can use the Web to share information; we can mash-up content from disparate sources to support all sorts of research; we can use Web 2.0 applications to engage and enlist communities to participate in government; and we can use all of these technologies and more to re-invent what we do in government and how we do it. But having the content is key. We do not invest in information technology for the sake of the technology, but because it makes the information more valuable. That is the reason to invest in digital preservation.

Along the way, we have to consider the legal framework in which government operates. Every jurisdiction has statutes governing the creation, management and use of government records and data. Most all of these were written when the medium of government was paper, and they have to be re-considered in the light of technology. Issues such as privacy and trustworthiness are most critical to address. Everyone has reason to wonder about who is using the personal information that government collects, and the reliability of that information as it is shared, manipulated and mashed up among a variety of entities, both public and private. Current laws don’t really do the situation justice; in a recent editorial, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune commented on the electronic records management statutes in Minnesota, saying, “The current law is just completely unhelpful. The Legislature has to get to this. ... it'll be messy and quite ungratifying, but it has to be done.” (July 13, 2008).

There are some places to start. The National Archives is developing an electronic records archives that will encompass electronic records management and preservation on a vast scale; the Library of Congress, through its National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program, is supporting initiatives to develop digital archives in a variety of communities, including state government; a variety of organizations, including the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council and the Sedona Conference, have looked at the ROI and legal issues; and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) has thoroughly explored the questions relating to managing digital content in the overall framework of enterprise technology in state government.

What are your thoughts? Is your government entity committed to digital preservation of records?