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GCN Home > 04/21/03 issue

Agencies will use common metrics to track finances

By Vanessa Jo Roberts, GCN Staff

By June, the Chief Financial Officers Council expects agencies to begin using new governmentwide performance indicators to report the status of their finances.

By the end of next month, the council plans to issue its set of metrics. So far, the council has settled on eight measures but could add more later, Office of Management and Budget controller Linda Springer said this month at the FOSE trade show in Washington.

“We believe there are certain things that are common and relevant across all agencies,” Springer said.

Springer and JoAnn Boutelle, deputy CFO for the Defense Department, discussed the council’s draft list of metrics.

Although performance indicator is what Springer called an in-vogue term, the government’s CFOs think metrics matter all the time, she said.

The challenge for the council was to settle on just a few metrics that would be of most use to department secretaries, agency chiefs and their deputies.

Getting the council’s CFOs to agree on common definitions for each item has been no mean feat, Boutelle said. “There has to be a meeting of the minds so you compare apples to apples,” said Boutelle, who is overseeing DOD’s effort to create a single financial enterprise architecture—with the first version planned for release later this month.

To iron out disparities in the slightly different takes that agencies have for identical financial information, “we had to have a lot of discussions,” Springer added.

Ultimately, OMB wants to make consolidated governmentwide data available online. Springer said she expects her agency to take responsibility for rolling up the metrics gathered by the government’s 24 major agencies.

Common metrics

The council decided late last year that it made sense to have a series of metrics that could be applied governmentwide. To that end, a subgroup began meeting in January to settle on metrics and definitions that would be amenable to agencies large and small.

To be useful, such metrics must be collected, analyzed and released in a timely manner, she said. “We want it to be like breathing.”

Most of the data will be monthly, although a few measurements will be quarterly.

Council members also believe that the data—to be helpful to agency decision-makers—must be readily accessible. That’s why the council will push agencies to make their data Web-friendly.