OMB eases reporting requirements for financial chiefs

The Office of Management and Budget will no longer require chief financial officers to update a series of federal databases with information on progress toward many fiscal goals published on a website called FIDO.gov, according to an internal memo Nextgov obtained.

On Oct. 15, Deputy Controller Debra Bond e-mailed the federal Chief Financial Officers Council listserv to say OMB would "cease collecting metrics" for a group of datasets in the interest of easing reporting requirements for federal managers. The metrics had been used to share financial systems inventories, assess financial services governmentwide, generate indicators for managers comparing their agency's fiscal well-being to that of the entire government, and update the public on resolving auditing issues with financial statements.

Bond called the initiative "the first round in OMB's effort to reduce the reporting burden."

Ever since the George W. Bush administration, CFOs have had to submit the financial data in question for distribution on FIDO.gov, an information-sharing website that was conceived to unite agencies and government lines of business, such as the federal Chief Information Officers Council and CFO Council, toward common goals, such as reducing waste.

The new guidance says OMB is taking these steps to ease cumbersome reporting requirements for federal managers. Bond called this initiative "the first round in OMB's effort to reduce the reporting burden."

The terminated databases include the Financial Management Systems Inventory, Financial Management Service Metrics, Metric Tracking System Financial Management Indicators, and Financial Information Progress System

"A recurring concern [CFOs] raised was the multiple requirements for financial system metrics or data sets," Bond said in the e-mail. "Please note that this is just the start of this important effort."

The move comes days ahead of the end of the fiscal year and in the midst of a financial systems restructuring that is supposed to either cancel or scale back purchases of this technology. OMB's Oct. 15 action raises questions about the transparency into those efforts that the public, contractors and nonfinancial federal chiefs will have.

Vendors and agencies look at the financial services metrics to see how they stack up to competitors and other agencies in terms of performance and affordability, according to FIDO.gov.

The metric tracking system for financial management indicators is intended to make it easier for government managers, Congress and other stakeholders to "assess the financial management health of the federal government as a whole and for each individual agency," the site's rankings of agencies says. "Tracking performance on indicators helps to guide financial management reforms and targets resources to areas where better stewardship is needed."

The financial management indicators include fund balances with the U.S. Treasury, electronic payments, percentage of invoices paid on time, interest penalties paid, travel card delinquency rates, and monthly summaries.

OMB officials on Tuesday said agency heads are still required to report the same metrics to OMB as part of other, pre-existing annual and monthly filings. But the information will not be available online for the public, industry and other agencies to see.

"By eliminating redundancies, we are streamlining our process to manage finances more efficiently and effectively," OMB spokeswoman Moira Mack said.

This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the changes OMB is making in the reporting process.