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### NEWS RELEASE 

# TOP HONORS TO USDA DEPUTY CFO 

Patricia E. Healy, Deputy Chief Financial Officer (CFO), U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA), received top honors for financial management
leadership from the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program
(JFMIP). She was one of this year's Donald L. Scantlebury Memorial Award
recipients at the March 10, 2006 Federal Financial Management
Conference, sponsored by the JFMIP Principals and the U.S. Chief
Financial Officers Council, in Washington, DC. The Donald L. Scantlebury
Memorial Award recognizes distinguished leadership in financial
management improvements in the public sector. Two of the JFMIP
Principals, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Linda M.
Springer and Government Accountability Office (GAO) Comptroller General
David M. Walker, made the presentation to Ms. Healy for outstanding and
distinguished leadership in improving financial management.

From December 2003 through November 2005, as the acting CFO at the USDA,
Ms. Healy was recognized as a visionary who planned strategically while
focusing on accountability and results. She led the Department's
dramatic financial management turnaround, a feat considered a major
government-wide accomplishment. Under her leadership, the Department
received three unqualified audit opinions on its annual financial
statements and significantly reduced the number of material weaknesses
by the end of 2004. She directed the implementation of a real property
system for the Department. Ms. Healy led the effort that resulted in the
selection of the USDA's National Finance Center (NFC) in New Orleans, as
one of the service providers for the Human Resources Line of Business.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, Ms. Healy
deployed NFC employees to multiple locations in the United States. This
move, along with system backup arrangements, allowed them to continue
payroll processing so that 565,000 federal employees could be paid on
time. USDA also recovered its financial systems and operations based in
New Orleans in time to accomplish the USDA fiscal year-end close and
meet financial statement deadlines. Ms. Healy's flexibility and
initiative during this difficult and unique period eased the disastrous
impact of the hurricane on USDA's services to its customers.

Prior to that, Ms. Healy held managerial positions at the Internal
Revenue Service, reporting to the CFO, and she worked at the National
Library of Medicine within the National Institutes of Health. Ms. Healy
has an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland, a Master's degree in
Library Science from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from the Ohio
State University. She was recently elected a Fellow of the National
Academy of Public Administration in 2005.

The JFMIP Principals are the Secretary of the Treasury, Director of
Office of Management and Budget and OPM, and the Comptroller General of
the U.S., GAO. The Financial Systems Integration Office, General
Services Administration is responsible for planning and conducting the
Federal Financial Management Conference.

The award was named to commemorate a dynamic leader, whose ideas and
actions brought significant advances to financial management in the
public sector. Mr. Scantlebury was the Chief Accountant and Director,
Accounting and Financial Management at GAO, and a member of the JFMIP
Steering Committee.

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For more information, contact Doris Chew at <doris.chew@gsa.gov> or
phone 202-219-0528