The AGA Weblog

Small Agencies Benefit from the CEAR Program

By: James B. Lockhart

James B. Lockhart is Director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)

This spring we received great news. OFHEO submitted its 2007 Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) to AGA and received the Certificate of Excellence in Accountability Reporting (CEAR) Award for the first time. With 10 straight years of clean audit opinions and the third PAR behind us, OFHEO decided to ask for the AGA review. Publishing the PAR is an opportunity to showcase what we do, what we accomplish and how we are benefiting the nation. Receiving the award is a validation of OFHEO’s results and core values—integrity, independence, professionalism and accountability. Our team who developed the PAR were thrilled that AGA recognized the agency. According to the AGA news release, PARs receiving the CEAR demonstrate “the highest standards of clarity in communicating financial information and demonstrating accountability.” We are extremely proud of that distinction.

At OFHEO, we take seriously our mission—“to promote housing and a strong national housing finance system by ensuring the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (“Enterprises”).” These $5 trillion mortgage giants had significant accounting problems. We have been supervising their remediation, which culminated in their issuance in February 2008 of timely financial statements for the first time in four years. The CEAR award shows that we have helped lead by example.

OFHEO is an agency with a small budget of $66 million. Given what has happened to the mortgage market over the last year, our mission has become even more critical to the American economy. With all the turmoil in the mortgage markets, the Enterprises’ market share over the last two years has doubled to 68 percent of all mortgages originated in the U.S.

The Enterprises have been critical to keeping the mortgage market functioning. The Senate has recently been debating legislation to strengthen our regulatory process. With all that is going on in the mortgage market and the legislation, it might have been easy to take our eye off performance management. I am very proud that our team did not.

While OFHEO is not required to submit its own PAR, we followed the guidelines and requirements set for agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers’ Act. OFHEO is the smallest agency to receive the CEAR Award among this year’s 17 recipients, and we encourage others not to be intimidated by the process. Small agencies sometimes question whether it’s worth the extra effort to meet the standards set for large agencies. The answer is yes. Whatever the size of a government entity, the public is counting on us to deliver results, just as they count on state and local governments to deliver results within their budgets. Following through with the PAR shows the public that we hold ourselves accountable to achieve the goals we set. While OFHEO also issues an annual Report to Congress on the condition of the Enterprises we regulate, for many small agencies the PAR can be the main opportunity to communicate with the public. Agencies can reach stakeholders they never knew they had.

For OFHEO, improving transparency about the mortgage market is also a strategy to achieve our mission. AGA’s feedback from the CEAR review reaffirms that. OFHEO’s PAR includes sidebars on the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the secondary mortgage market and OFHEO’s oversight role. In her June 16 blog about the CEAR, Evie Barry, AGA’s director of Performance Reporting, cited these sidebars as “excellent primers for helping the unfamiliar understand a complex government function that is rich in acronyms.” Writing these and the rest of the PAR requires OFHEO staff to have the discipline of explaining our technical work in understandable, jargon-free language. It reflects our third strategic goal of continuing to support the national policy of an efficient secondary mortgage market by providing timely information and analysis on key policy issues such as loan limit changes, Enterprise market share and OFHEO's quarterly House Price Index. To do so, we also work with other federal agencies to coordinate efforts that could affect the nation's mortgage markets and housing finance system.

In many organizations, the less visible functions do not get the credit and recognition that their hard work and professionalism deserve. The CEAR gave us an opportunity to change that shortcoming by showcasing our mission support staff’s successes to the whole agency. As it turned out, we had our annual awards ceremony the next day so we were able to recognize the CEAR award team in front of the whole agency. It’s been almost two months since we learned we were getting the CEAR, and our mission staff continue to congratulate their colleagues and have renewed interest in improving our performance goals and reporting. The credit has been shared with all of OFHEO as everyone contributed to accomplishing the results. I can’t think of a better reinforcement for teamwork.

I came to OFHEO after having been principal Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer of the Social Security Administration (SSA). SSA publishes a PAR that has received the CEAR award for the last 10 years. It was great to see the SSA team awarded for their tenth straight year, the only agency to do so. It has been my pleasure and privilege to lead OFHEO to this same distinction, its first CEAR award.

I have accepted the CEAR award for the largest and now the smallest agency. I have to again thank AGA for supporting this award and performance cultures in government. I also thank Clay Johnson, the Deputy Director for Management at OMB for his incredible effort to support results, strong management, dedicated career employees, the President’s Management Agenda and the PART Process. Government agencies need to create results for American taxpayers. Too often political appointees emphasize policy and legislation over performance and management. I am hoping that the next Administration will build upon the emphasis on management and performance that has come from President Bush, the Office of Management and Budget, the Government Accountability Office and AGA.

OFHEO values continuous improvement. We review other agencies’ PARs to gather ideas about best practices and adopt what can work well here. Now that we’ve had our own AGA review, we look forward to following up on their OFHEO-specific recommendations to produce even better results and PARs in the years to come.

Link to OFHEO’S 2007 PAR

TOMORROW: Tom Amyot, "The Role of an Educator in Professional Development"

Have We Gone Too Far or Not Far Enough with Performance Measurement Reporting?

By: Sam M. McCall, CGFM, CPA, CIA, CGAP

Sam M. McCall, CGFM, CPA, CIA, CGAP, a member of AGA’s Tallahassee Chapter and a Past National President, is city auditor in Tallahassee, FL

A couple of years ago I helped coauthor an article for AGA’s Journal of Government Financial Management on performance measurement reporting. In that article, two positions, some would say extreme positions, were discussed about whether governments should report externally on their government’s performance.

The positions were described as the “constrained perspective” and the “expansive perspective.” Advocates of the constrained perspective take the view that external reporting of performance information, even if that information is not included in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, could undermine the reputation and legitimacy of financial reporting. The constrained view is supported by traditional thinking in accounting and auditing that focuses on a scientific approach to the discipline and a focus on issues of efficiency and facts. Those in support of the expansive perspective assert that financial reporting to include performance measurement reporting better serves elected officials and citizens. To not also report on the performance of government results in an incomplete report. The expansive view is supported by efficient citizenship, bureaucratic politics and democracy theory from public administration. This expansive view recognizes that to fully understand and have an appreciation for government and for external reports to have meaning, they have to necessarily address issues involving both facts and values.

Efficient citizenship theory values citizens as much more than customers of government services; they are owners of the government. Further, government has a responsibility to provide information to citizens so they can form their own opinions about the quality and quantity of services received. Through information exchange, citizens will be more engaged and will exercise their ownership rights through their voting preferences. The result will be more efficient citizens.

On the other hand, those of us who have financial management and accounting backgrounds have benefited from being recognized as a member of an educated and respected profession. Over an extended period of time, elected and regulatory bodies have recognized the financial management profession as experts on matters of accounting. Those bodies have deferred to financial preparers and attestors on issues relating to financial reporting and verification.

Some say the issues is one of accounting (a constrained perspective) versus accountability (the expansive perspective.)

My questions are:

A. Is performance reporting on service efforts and accomplishments needed to better address the information needs of citizens?
B. Does performance measurement reporting threaten the integrity and credibility of the financial management profession?
C. Do you support a constrained or expansive perspective on performance measurement reporting?
D. How does the government best meet the information needs of citizens and at the same time maintain or enhance the earned respect for the financial management profession?

TOMORROW: Wendy Payne, CGFM, Executive Director, FASAB, on "Finding the Sweet Spot between Principles and Rules"

Good Performance Reporting… Now for Good Arguing

By: Kenneth A. Smith, Ph.D., CPA

Kenneth A. Smith, Ph.D., CPA, a founding member of AGA’s Mid-Willamette Valley Chapter, is an
assistant professor of accounting, Willamette University.

When it comes to performance reporting, I think we need to argue more often, more fairly and more openly. There are many benefits from engaging in argument (done right), but also some traps to avoid—but, yes, my key point is that we need more arguing…especially about the link between performance reporting and performance managing.

My fear is we simply do not know the HOW near as much as we know the WHAT. In this quarter’s (Summer 2008) Journal of Government Financial Management, my colleagues and I show that state agencies in Oregon are the best performance reporters (using AGA guidelines), but do we really know HOW they got there? We also know that different states are better at performing (using Governing Magazine rankings), but HOW do they do it? We know that there are numerous fads and large scale change initiatives every few years (see Ken Miller’s April column), but do we know HOW to say “yes” or “no” to the right ones for us?

My colleague Fred Thompson promotes the use of “Ethical Argumentation,” and I completely agree. He often says we need to focus on “WHAT is right, rather than WHO is right.” The nine guidelines for this approach reduce the likelihood of bad outcomes from arguing unfairly, without an open mind or too infrequently.

1. Practice inquiry before advocacy. Be open to a variety of points of view before you embrace any one of them.

2. Know your subject [do your homework].

3. Be honest about what you know and do not know [do not invent].

4. Try to tell the truth as you perceive it [do not lie or distort].

5. Do not oversimplify.

6. Acknowledge possible weaknesses in your position. Be honest about your own ambivalence or uncertainty.

7. Avoid irrelevant emotional appeals or diversionary tactics.

8. Appeal to the best motives of your fellows, not their worst.

9. Be prepared to lose if winning means doing psychological harm to others and demeaning yourself in the bargain.

Fred also promotes the idea of a “clinical” model of education. My reading of Fred’s article is that we need to proactively merge the views from academics and practitioners. Our approach to management needs to include evidence tempered by practice…and practice informed by theory and evidence. We are going to try the “clinical” model here at our campus in a performance measurement & management training on July 17. Wish us luck and I’ll post my observations afterwards.

So my call is a call to action. That each manager, analyst, elected official, accountant, academic and consultant takes a few steps back. Pick up a piece of paper—or better yet write a response to this blog—and write out three things regarding a proposition about performance reporting, such as the ones below:
1) What I KNOW
2) HOW I know it and
3) WHO disagrees with me.
The next step is to engage in a learning activity (called an ethical argument) with that person…we have to engage the other person because ideas, theories and observations cannot engage in an interactive discussion.

PROPOSITION #1 External performance reporting is necessary for accountability purposes.
PROPOSITION #2 External performance reporting is necessary for effective performance management.
PROPOSITION #3 External performance reporting is a colossal waste of time, no one reads them and neither managers nor elected officials use them.
PROPOSITION #4 External performance reporting is extremely risky because the media will only focus on the bad news.

Try the clinical approach tempered with ethical argumentation and let others know on what points you come to agreement and those that remain unresolved. Those unresolved ones are worth our time to engage in a broader discussion. However, I prefer the term argument to discussion—because I want to know which IDEAS and APPROACHES ultimately win—and have no interest in which person provides the conclusive insights.

I’m happy to share my 3 items (What I KNOW, HOW I know it, and WHO disagrees with me) on the 4 propositions—or any others—as long as you post something and agree to follow the nine guidelines for ethical argumentation.

Won’t you PLEASE argue with me?

TOMORROW: William Clements, Ph.D., Dean, School of Graduate Studies Norwich University on "The Norwich University MPA and CGFM”

Questions on posting comments or wish to subscribe to the feed that sends blogs right to your e-mail? Find instructions here. Want to be our guest on the Blog? Contact Marie Force, AGA communications director, at mforce@cox.net.

Public Performance Reporting: An Insider’s Guide

By: Michael Jacobson

Michael Jacobson, a member of AGA’s Seattle Chapter, is King County Washington’s Performance Management Director and holds the unusual record of being the only person to have won an AGA Certificate of Achievement in performance reporting for two different performance reports. AGA’s Certificate of Achievement program is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to review performance reports against the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB)-suggested criteria for public performance reporting.

Public performance reporting is a peculiar beast. Just because you produce a public report doesn’t guarantee that are using the results to manage, nor does it mean you are necessarily doing it effectively. On the other hand, if you are doing internally focused performance management, it isn’t a requirement that you necessarily report your results to the public.

Of the approximately 88,000 state and local governments and special districts in the United States, a relatively small percentage are doing performance management. Of that number, even fewer are reporting results to the public. And of those, even fewer are doing public engagement around their reporting.

Another issue that the performance reporting process raises is that even if the public has had input, there remains a big need for a short, more publicly accessible report. Recent focus groups that we hosted indicated that four pages were the maximum folks would review! But a four-pager will never be sufficient for advocacy groups or elected officials. So the performance manager is left with the following conundrum: no four-pager will ever get an AGA Certificate of Achievement in Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting for public reporting, and yet a report that receives AGA’s certificate might not be read by many people!

As someone who regularly submits our performance reports to the AGA certificate process, I wanted to demystify some of the issues around the process. Perhaps it will encourage you and your jurisdiction to submit your own performance report.

Why I submit: Rather than just wanting to put another Plexiglas honor in the awards cabinet, my own motivation is to learn and to improve. I have submitted two first-time reports primarily to get feedback from my professional peers and to get ideas on how to do better. Each time I received a certificate, but I have also received a three- to four-page letter of suggestions for how to improve the content, layout and approach of my report. These comments have been more useful to me than the ratings.

Must be perfect: I think most people believe that you have to have a perfect score to get a certificate. In fact, the scoring rubric allows you to get ratings on up to four criteria that equate to “attempted to address, but not adequately.” That means that you can discuss some aspect of your program that you are developing but may not yet have completed. For example, having done absolutely no public engagement, I wrote a paragraph or two about our plans to do so in the future. This resulted in a prompt “attempted to address, but not adequately” from the raters, but showed that I had not forgotten to consider it at all. You only have to completely avoid the dreaded “did not address” rating. My advice is to do your best but do not let perfection be your enemy. The bottom line is that the certificate is based on substantial, not absolute completeness.

Recognition: Although I will admit to having a personal ego, the recognition I am talking about is for my program and its importance when competing with many other, higher visibility issues. Performance management isn’t sexy, is often hard, and typically forces organizations to change the way they do things. This makes performance management pretty low on the “favorite thing to do” list. Outside, third-party acknowledgement that you are doing it the right way goes a long way toward building your personal and programmatic credibility and visibility.

All of this to say that although performance reporting isn’t easy, it’s not as hard as some people make it out to be.

What do you think are the biggest obstacles to jurisdictions that already do public reporting to submitting their reports? Never heard of the program? Worried about not meeting all of the criteria? Concerned about perfection or failure? Let’s hear your opinion.

TOMORROW: Ken Smith, Ph.D., CPA, assistant professor of accounting, Willamette University, on "Performance Reporting by State Agencies"

Questions on posting comments or wish to subscribe to the feed that sends blogs right to your e-mail? Find instructions here. Want to be our guest on the Blog? Contact Marie Force, AGA communications director, at mforce@cox.net.

Performance Based Government: The Talent Age Challenge for the Private Sector

By: Jon Desenberg

Jon Desenberg is the policy director for
The Performance Institute.

Talent is the Only Sustainable Edge
The talent age really is the product of the information revolution and the flattening of the world. What that means simply is that when the world is just flat—when you can access human talent anywhere—whether it’s for services or manufacturing, what kind of human talent your country or community or institution can aggregate and offer is really what John Seeley Brown and John Hagel, who are two management consultants, called, “the only sustainable edge.”
Thomas Friedman
The New York Times Columnist and Author
(Footnote: Interview in Business Strategies Magazine, May 2006)

Evolution to the Talent Age

Talent Drives Performance

Agency leaders have instinctively known that top talent drives superior performance—whether that realization is evident in an outstanding sales representative who consistently exceeds quotas or a brilliant engineer who develops the next product innovation.

Over the past half a decade, the way the government’s career leadership thinks about talent has evolved. Now, talent is a top of mind issue in the board room and the C-suite. Accordingly, these leaders are looking to HR to provide processes, policies, and technology to acquire, retain, and optimize talent in the organization. In fact, one study of executives found:
• 82 percent believe that human capital has an impact on profitability.
• 92 percent think that human capital has a significant effect on customer satisfaction.
• 72 percent believe that human capital has an impact on innovation and new product development.

Government leaders acknowledge that talent drives performance in the form of better customer service, higher sales performance, product and service innovation, organizational process improvement, as well as strong management and leadership. CEOs are cognizant of the significance and impact of aggregated work force talent. For example, in the IBM 2006 CEO Study, 41 percent of CEOs indicated that employees are the best source of innovation within an organization.

Increasingly, executive teams are looking at the assembled work force and even their external talent pools as corporate assets that can be effectively leveraged to create more taxpayer value.

Yet, the current work force climate is the most turbulent and challenging environment in the history of commerce.

The Government’s Talent Age Challenge
Top talent has never been more valuable, nor the competition for it more fierce.
– Fortune Magazine, January 30, 2006

In a survey polling more than 700 public and private sector executives, the number one challenge related to controlling costs and the other four related to meeting their mission requirements.

These top five organizational challenges are:
1. Financial Pressures to Cut Costs
2. Rapid Mission Expansion
3. Increased accountability and Transparency
4. Adapting New Delivery Mechanisms
5. Aging Work force

The current global work force environment may be the most challenging in history. A Senior HR Executive at the 2006 IBM Human Resources Summit said it this way, “Right now, globalization has created an absolutely screwed up, crazy world for any HR person—nothing has been more challenging.”

Consider this:

• 73 percent of managers claim that competition for talent has increased since 2005. (DDI-Selection Forecast 2006–2007 Report)

• New Zealand, Australia and South Africa lead the list of countries where work force skill shortages is seen to be the biggest constraint on expansion—60 percent, 59 percent and 58 percent respectively. (Grant Thornton International Business Report 2007)

• Increasing industrialization in Southeast Asia has led to rising levels of migration of skilled talent. Additional pressure is being generated by rising economies such as China and India.

• The U.S. will have a 10 million worker shortfall by 2010. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• The majority of workers in many countries is open to offers, actively job hunting, or plans to retire including in the U.S. (63 percent), France (69 percent), UK (70 percent). (Towers Perrin)

• Only 14 percent of workers are actively engaged in their jobs. 24 percent of workers are actively disengaged. (Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study)

• 500 largest companies in the U.S. expect to lose 50 percent of their senior management in the next five years. (Business Week, October 2005)

• 51 percent of executives cite lack of potential leaders as their first or second top talent challenge. (Bersin & Associates, 2007)

This dynamic global business environment is at the root of an unprecedented set of talent challenges. I’d like to use or time together today on the AGA Blog to discuss Talent Management. What is your organization doing to address these challenges?

TUESDAY: AGA Past National President Sam McCall, CGFM, City Auditor, City of Tallahassee, FL, "Compliance with IIA and GAO Peer Review Standards"

Questions on posting comments or wish to subscribe to the feed that sends blogs right to your e-mail? Find instructions here. Want to be our guest on the Blog? Contact Marie Force, AGA communications director, at mforce@cox.net.

Performance Management: Can We Have It All?

By: Michael Jacobson

Michael Jacobson, a member of AGA’s Seattle Chapter, is King County Washington’s Performance Management Director and holds the unusual record of being the only person to have won an AGA Certificate of Achievement in performance reporting for two different performance reports. AGA’s Certificate of Achievement program is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to review performance reports against the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB)-suggested criteria for public performance reporting.

As the Performance Management Director of one of the nation’s larger and more diverse counties, I find myself on the receiving end of a lot of advice: from national organizations about how to do my job, guidelines about how much information to provide and how to provide it, recommendations about involving the public in my work, advice on how to provide information to tie performance information to the budget process, scholarly advice on what I should be focused on and how to manage my program as well as my boss’s two cents! All this advice is honestly given in the most friendly, inspiring and helpful way.

However, it leaves me wondering if anyone is looking collectively at all this advice. I meet lots of colleagues who excel at one or more dimensions of the performance management puzzle. Some do performance budgeting well. Some do public reporting well. Some do an excellent job of engaging their public in the process. Some have an active performance management culture or a “Stat” type program. Some have strategic plans. Some tie organizational measures to employees. But I have yet to meet the performance manager who does it all and does it all well.

When colleagues just beginning their performance management journey ask for my advice about who is the best, I have begun to ask them “The best in what?” For example, if you want the best in public reporting, look at the AGA award winners. If you want the best at involving the public look to National Center for Civic Innovation Trailblazers. I recently identified best practioners in performance budgeting through an informal survey of key colleagues. Although you will see some jurisdictional names in common, there are not many that are on every list.

Here’s my current running list of expectations for robust performance management in government:

• Strong performance measurement: common framework, stable measures
• Performance management: regular senior management-level discussion about results and what to do about it, can include business process improvement or customer initiatives
• Performance budgeting: not just measures in your budget, but a process to make trade-offs and adjustments based on financial costs and program results
• Public reporting: meeting GASB’s criteria/obtaining AGA’s Certificate of Achievement and a short, citizen-focused report
• Public engagement: involving your residents in what they want to see in terms of performance information
• Strategic planning: that foundational document to determine what direction to go
• Employee performance: tying organizational performance to that of employees

I am lucky to be a full-time performance management professional. But many jurisdictions can’t or won’t put that level of human resource toward what I perceive to be a core competency of modern public management. If I can’t do it all, how will they ever be able to?

What to you think are the public sector’s most important performance management elements? Who do you think is doing it all well? And more profoundly, can we in fact have it all?

MONDAY: Eric Berman, deputy controller, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and AGA GASAC Representative on "Demystifying Derivatives?"

Questions on posting comments or wish to subscribe to the feed that sends blogs right to your e-mail? Find instructions here. Want to be our guest on the Blog? Contact Marie Force, AGA communications director, at mforce@cox.net.

How Serious Are We About Accounting for Performance-Based Management?

By: John J. Radford, CGFM, CIA, CFE

John J. Radford, CGFM, CIA, CFE is the Oregon state controller and has served under five Oregon Governors. He is past President of the National Association of State Auditors, Controllers and Treasurers and currently serves on the AGA National Executive Committee.

Performance-based anything in government goes back a long way. It goes back at least to the days of Planned Program Budgeting Systems (PPBS) introduced by Bob McNamara (U.S. Department of Defense) in the 1950s. The study that led to PPBS was entitled "Efficiency and Economy in Government through New Budgeting and Accounting Procedures." The PPBS system in those days captured detailed information about programs and attempted to rationalize priorities focusing on long-term planning.

Why did PPBS fail? It is generally thought that it was because the accounting and budgeting systems in that era were not capable of keeping up with the amount of and cost of data and analysis required and that the emphasis on the long term was inconsistent with political decision-making processes.

The just released 2008 PEW Center on the State's Government Performance
Project showed that only four states scored an A on information management. Washington, one of the four states, was cited as not having an "activity-based accounting or costing" system. My guess is that none of the other 49 states have an activity or cost accounting system operational either.

When the Governmental Accounting Standards Board put Service Efforts and
Accomplishments REPORTING on its technical agenda, many state and local governments responded less than enthusiastically. Many are not supportive even though it is voluntary reporting and many believe not even appropriate for the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. A significant argument advanced by those who oppose standards being established by an independent accounting standards board relates to the politics of local budgeting and the framing of local political outcomes.

When the National Association of State Comptrollers partnered with Accenture and The Hackett Group to pull together state-level best practices, only eight states as of April 2007 participated by evaluating their financial infrastructure. Only eight out of 50 states were interested in benchmarking their financial management performance. In the interest of full disclosure, Oregon also declined.

I know of one agency in Oregon that years ago pushed the functionality of the general ledger system to provide much needed cost accounting information to support resource allocation, but when the manager left the agency, the effort was abandoned. Prior statewide discussions in Oregon about greater cost accounting information and linkage and measurement with outputs has not produced any significant level of interest in financing required investments, operation and maintenance of such a system.

It almost appears as though the cost of providing real activity-based cost accounting or performance-based management systems based on cost
accounting standards, and the perceived interference with political decision-making that such standards could ignite, are still with us. In a world where resources are allocated based on perception, group think, the latest crisis and political relationships, I have to wonder about the efficacy of pursuing the development and implementation of cost accounting systems to support performance based management. One has to question if that will ever happen beyond experimentation and a few isolated examples of success. I have a colleague on my team who is fond of saying, "you can bring a person to knowledge, but you can't make them think."

I wonder what the world would be like if we had great governmental cost accounting principles coupled with great governmental cost accounting systems used to support auditable performance measurement, evaluation and reporting. Would government become more efficient and effective? Or would there be a clash between the worlds of financial management and politics? What do you think?

COMING MONDAY: Thomas J. Sadowski, CGFM, CPA, state controller, State of Missouri, on Transforming the Use of Purchase Cards

Questions on posting comments? Find instructions here. Want to be our guest on the Blog? Contact Marie Force, AGA communications director, at mforce@cox.net.