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US GAO: NEED FOR US GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & TRANSPARENCY GROWS - CAN'T FIND $124 BILLION

By David Colgren posted 10-21-2015 11:10 AM

  

Dear TSP Committee Members:

 

Below is a link to a US GAO Report to the US Senate Finance Committee earlier this month on the need to support better accountability and transparency through "data tagging" of financial information across government to better track billions of dollars of US taxpayer money distributed to government agencies to assist and protect the public. According to the US GAO report more than $124 Billion was unaccounted for or improper payments were distributed by government agencies -- enough to run many of the countries governments around the world. 

http://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/100115%20Dodaro%20Testimony%20on%20Improper%20Payments.pdf 

Using technologies such as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) (which the IMA supports) can assist the government in this effort as mandated and approved unanimously by Congress in 2014 and signed into law by President Obama. The question is -- can the White House, Treasury and OMB deliver on this mandate?  

Is government accounting and transparency an issue Members of US Congress and the Administration will support and oversee as the government moves to monitor itself? At this point US Treasury and OMB have been quiet on how they are implementing the DATA Act (Approved in 2014) with very few data KPIs released that can be data tagged and shared across government agencies. Very little if any effort has been undertaken to included external stakeholders in the development process to make sure the data tagged can be used by entities outside of government for analytics and performance review. No public advisory committee has been formed (to my knowledge) to provide input on implementation -- meanwhile hundreds of millions of dollars will be spend by government to hold government accountable under the DATA Act. Stay tuned. Meanwhile the government continues to move forward spending billions of US taxpayer dollars without the knowledge needed to track and monitor this money or understand which programs are effective or not effective.

David Colgren 

 

 

 



#Corpgov #cfo #AccountingTechnology #Compliance #XBRL #sustainability
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