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FIXING THE FINANCIALS: FEATURING USDA AND

EDUCATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 10, 2003

Serial No. 108–58

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania, Chairman

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

MIKE HETTINGER, Staff Director

LARRY BRADY, Professional Staff Member

AMY LAUDEMAN, Clerk

MARK STEPHENSON, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 10, 2003 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

McPherson, Edward, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Agriculture;

Jack Martin, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Education; McCoy

Williams, Director of Financial Management and Assurance, U.S. General Accounting Office; and Linda Calbom, Director of Financial Management and Assurance, U.S. General Accounting Office ......................... 6

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Calbom, Linda, Director of Financial Management and Assurance, U.S.

General Accounting Office, prepared statement of .................................... 39

Martin, Jack, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Education:

Followup questions and responses ........................................................... 64

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 16

McPherson, Edward, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Agriculture:

Followup questions and responses ........................................................... 66

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 8

Platts, Hon. Todd Russell, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of ...................................................... 3

Williams, McCoy, Director of Financial Management and Assurance, U.S.

General Accounting Office, prepared statement of .................................... 25

(1)

FIXING THE FINANCIALS: FEATURING USDA

AND EDUCATION

TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AND

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Todd Russell Platts

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Platts, Blackburn, and Towns.

Staff present: Mike Hettinger, staff director; Dan Daly, counsel;

Larry Brady, Kara Galles, and Tabetha Mueller, professional staff

members; Amy Laudeman, clerk; Mark Stephenson, minority professional staff member; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and

Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mr. PLATTS. Good afternoon. A quorum being present this hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial

Management will come to order. Today the subcommittee brings

before it two executive departments, the Department of Agriculture

and the Department of Education who have demonstrated significant progress on improving their overall financial management. I

would like to thank the chief financial officers of those departments

who are before us today as well as the leadership at the departments for their efforts.

You are to be congratulated on achieving clean audit opinions on

your financial statements for fiscal year 2002. While clean audit

opinions are certainly a goal that each of the Chief Financial Officer Act agencies shares, there are many of us who believe that a

clean financial audit tells only a small part of the story. All too

often we hear stories of agencies that achieve clean opinions only

through last minute heroic efforts or recreating their books at the

end of the year. This is not what Congress intended under the CFO

Act. Obtaining a clean audit opinion should be a by-product of good

year round financial management and not just a test that agencies

try to pass at the end of the fiscal year.

USDA and Education have implemented real changes designed

to improve the overall management of their agencies, and as a consequence, were able to obtain clean audits. USDA achieved a clean

opinion by focusing on improving internal controls and accountability. They have retooled business and accounting processes and

placed greater emphasis on data integrity, internal controls and

getting results from their programs. While USDA has made enorVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:31 Oct 16, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89718.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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mous strides in improving financial management, the Forest Service a component of the USDA remains on the GAO’s high risk list.

Department of Education has also made great improvement on

managing its finances. Education learned from suggestions that

were made on the previous financial audits and implemented solutions that addressed those suggestions. They now produce financial

statements on a quarterly basis and utilize strategic planning. In

addition, the Department installed and updated a financial accounting system and coordinated a management and improvement

team who seeks areas of opportunities to improve financial processes and data integrity. However, there are still internal control

concerns, especially in the area of student loan programs, which

also need to be addressed. Today, we look forward to hearing about

the improvements that have been made at the USDA and the Department of Education, the lessons that can be learned from the

successes at these two departments, and the plans each of these departments has to overcome their remaining financial management

challenges.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Todd Russell Platts follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Joining us here today are Ted McPherson, Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Agriculture. And as I was

pleased to disclose, first time you are before us, native of the 19th

Congressional District, and glad to have you with us again. Followed by Jack Martin, Chief Financial Officer at the Department

of Education, and Mr. McCoy Williams and Linda Calbom, Directors of Financial Management and Assurance at the General Accounting Office, who will testify about the financial management

issues at the Department of Agriculture and Education, respectively. Nice to have both of you with us again as well. Appreciate

all of you for coming and we look forward to your testimonies. Now

yield to the ranking member, the gentleman from New York, Mr.

Towns, for the purpose of making an opening statement.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Let me thank

you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing today. In April, we

began this series of hearings with the look at the consolidated financial statement of the United States. Today we will hear testimony regarding the Department of Agriculture and Education.

Both agencies received clean audit opinions on their fiscal year

2002 financial statements for the first time in many years. And I

want to congratulate Mr. Martin and Mr. McPherson for their efforts and also their staff. You have achieved an important milestone.

However, as I am sure all of our witnesses would agree, much

work still remains to be done. Internal controls and financial management system weaknesses remain at the Department of Education that impede the agency’s ability to produce timely and accurate financial information. Education also continues to make billions of dollars of adjustments to previous years financial statements for which auditors cannot identify a definite cause. Despite

significant improvements, student financial aid at the Department

of Education, which makes more than $50 billion a year in grants

and loans, continue to be rated a high risk area by the General Accounting Office.

USDA faces problems with—similar to Education with internal

controls and financial management systems, which have led some

to question whether achievement of receiving a clean audit opinion

can be repeated. With resources this year of 123 billion in assets

and a budget of 72 billion, resolving the problem is critical. The Department of Agriculture and several of its bureaus and agencies

have had longstanding and very complex financial management

problems. While there is still clearly much more to be done, the Department has made some significant improvements and progress

seems to be continuing.

Perhaps most important, the Department’s transition from its

outdated inadequate accounting system to the new foundation financial information system is complete and should go a long way

toward addressing some of the Department’s problems. Of particular concern at USDA is the Forest Service, which has been designated as high risk by GAO since 1999. I look forward to hearing

from our witnesses about the progress that has been made and

what steps we need to take to overcome the remaining barriers to

sound financial management at USDA and Education. Thank you,

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Mr. Chairman. And again, let me thank you for holding this hearing. I think it’s very timely. I yield back.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns, we will now proceed to our

witnesses and would ask that each witness and anyone who might

be advising them during their testimonies to stand and raise their

right hands and take the oath together, and then we will proceed

to your testimony.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PLATTS. The clerk will note that all witnesses affirmed the

oath and we will proceed directly to the testimony.

Mr. McPherson, starting with you, followed by Mr. Martin, Mr.

Williams and Ms. Calbom. We appreciate the testimonies you presented to us ahead of time in writing. And we use 5 minutes as

a rough gauge. With a more intimate setting here with the ranking

member and myself, we’re not going to stick to that 5 minutes, but

if we can use that as a guideline that would be great.

Mr. McPherson if you would like to begin.

STATEMENTS OF EDWARD McPHERSON, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; JACK MARTIN,

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION;

McCOY WILLIAMS, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

AND ASSURANCE, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND

LINDA CALBOM, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

AND ASSURANCE, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. MCPHERSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to continue to work together on

improving financial management in the Federal Government. My

written testimony details the valuable results we have produced in

implementing sufficient internal control and data integrity to

achieve the first clean audit opinion at the Department of Agriculture during fiscal year 2002. Rehabilitation of this environment

is a continuing process of massive change, not an event. You have

asked me to describe today the management changes we made

that, in turn, resulted in USDA’s first unqualified opinion on its financial statements.

George Bernard Shaw, the British playwright, believed great innovation starts with an unreasonable person. Four principles guide

our unreasonableness in leading valuable change at USDA. First,

we focus on real results by setting clear goals and achieving tangible value. For example, while improving internal controls leading

to the first clean audit at USDA, we increased the referral rate on

$364 million of loans eligible for Treasury cross-servicing to 96 percent from 14 percent the prior year. That one change alone results

in as much as $300 million more each year of cash collections returned to the U.S. Treasury each year for the foreseeable future.

Second, we behave as owners in taking full responsibility to complete any task. Laser-like clarity of individual accountability or

ownership is key to unlocking the natural strengths of bureaucracies. By substituting the behavior of owners in USDA’s culture,

we have created a bias to action for producing results, resourcefully

using existing levels of funding and career civil servant staffing.

Third, we operate at a constructively aggressive pace. Speed is important and usually contributes to better outcomes. To cut the time

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required to execute, I immediately inserted three hand-picked individuals with controller skills and one person with an outstanding

background in information technology as catalysts. Each of these

people understands internal control, data integrity, business processes and application of information technology. Perhaps most important, each of these individuals is interpersonally astute and

knows how to make change by substituting successes for rhetoric.

Simultaneously, I injected a team of a dozen carefully selected

practitioners, not consultants, in an intense assignment to perform

deferred work that had accumulated over several previous years,

such as clearing 6 million unreconciled cash items totaling several

billion dollars and accounting for $10 billion of real and personal

property. Fourth, we value leadership and talent individual excellence and collective success are attributes of most successful teams

and talent will outperform methodology in many turn-around situations. Specifically, leadership and talent achieved 17 accounting

systems conversions on time and within budget for all USDA agencies.

Leaders in challenging settings such as this are simply purveyors

of hope, and hope becomes realty measured by how many other associates in an enterprise are recognized for significant achievements. This week, 18 career civil service leaders from my Office of

the Chief Financial Officer and USDA agency Chief Financial Officers, are receiving the Secretary of Agriculture’s Plow Award, as in

many people are glad to harvest, few are willing to plow, the top

recognition for employees of USDA.

Recently I had the pleasure of recognizing 600 associates

throughout USDA and at the National Financial Center each individually for their valuable work in regard to financial management.

One of our associates, Jesse King, is receiving the National

Achievement of the Year Award from the Association of Government Accountants for the value he has added in controllership and

accounting operations. So people are the only source of a sustainable competitive advantage and I believe in people, especially unreasonable people.

Thank you for the opportunity to work together. I look forward

to listening carefully to what is important to each of you and participating in our discussion today.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. McPherson.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McPherson follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Martin.

Mr. MARTIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee

good afternoon. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Department’s improvements in financial management

which resulted in the Department’s first unqualified audit opinion

of its financial statements in many years. When Secretary Paige

arrived at the Department of Education back in January 2001, he

discovered that there were serious management problems. The Department had not received a clean audit opinion in years and there

was not any expectation of one in the near future. The Department

of Education, Inspector General’s Office and the General Accounting Office, had identified hundreds of problems that needed immediate attention before the Department could receive a clean audit.

Secretary Paige promised that one of his top priorities would be to

identify and correct all of the management problems that were preventing the Department from operating at its peak performance. I

am proud to say the Department is keeping the Secretary’s promise.

Most importantly, the Department has received its first unqualified or clean independent audit opinion since 1997 and only the

second in its history. This is a critical milestone in our effort to address concerns surrounding the Department’s financial reporting,

reconciliation of financial records and control over our information

systems. Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary Bill Hansen testified

before the Subcommittee on Select Education, Committee on Education in the Workforce to discuss the Department’s significant

progress toward overcoming our management challenges.

While many challenges remain, we are proud of the progress we

have made. From a financial management perspective, the Department of Education is a complex Federal agency. We have a high

number of separate appropriations, over 200 to manage, consolidate

and account for. We maintain the smallest number of FTE’s while

managing the third largest discretionary budget of cabinet level

agencies. We must also manage multiple program types, such as

Federal Family Education Loans and William D. Ford Direct Student Loans, revolving funds, grants and trust funds. Pell and direct

loans have very complex accounting mandates under the Federal

Credit Reform Act of 1990.

One of the most significant audit issues the Department addresses each year involves FFEL and Direct Loan program cost estimates. The Department’s financial statements include cost estimates of total loans outstanding for these programs and anticipated losses stemming from loan defaults, discharges and other

costs. Taken together, these programs involve a $280 billion portfolio and 22 million borrowers, making the Department one of the

largest lenders and guarantors in the world.

Consistent with the Federal Credit Reform Act, cost estimates for

these programs reflect the net present value of Federal cost associated with all projected future cash-flows, disbursements, repayments, interest, defaults, subsidy payments to loan holders and

others for loans originated in each given fiscal year. We base program cost estimates on a complex set of econometric assumptions

regarding interest rates and borrower behavior, given the size and

complexity of these estimates as well as periodic fluctuations in the

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underlying variables, the Department’s auditors devoted a significant portion of time reviewing the estimates and estimation process. I worked with auditors and the Department received its first

clean opinion since 1997.

We also improved our financial management by setting out to accomplish three short-term and six long-term goals set by Secretary

Paige shortly after he took office. Short-term goals were to install

new leadership in the financial and management areas of the Department, assemble a task force of career department leaders to

identify and address as many short-term management improvement recommendations as possible and develop a blueprint to address longer term and structural issues and solicit the counsel and

advice of external advisors. Long-term goals were to obtain a clean

audit opinion. Establish effective internal controls that addressed

credit card abuses and duplicate payments and protect the Department’s assets from waste, fraud and abuse. Create a culture of accountability. Create a structure for measuring progress. Modernize

student aid delivery. And remove the student financial assistance

programs from GAO’s high risk list.

Specific steps the Department took to reach the Secretary’s objectives were: first, we updated our organization structure. My appointment as Chief Financial Officer gave the Department its first

CFO in 3 years. We more clearly defined the roles and responsibilities of CFO management. And we made a concerted effort to recruit and retain talented accountants and financial management

personnel. We also worked more cooperatively with the Office of

Federal Student Aid CFO, who temporarily reported directly to the

Department CFO, and the Department’s Budget Service. Leadership from all three organizations ensured that the Department

achieved its financial reporting objectives. We improved management of the audit process.

The Department has improved its audit and management process

through implementation of several initiatives. A key initiative

which significantly enhanced quality control was the creation of a

single point of contact to manage the audit process. We replaced

our financial systems. Last year the Department replaced its financial accounting system with the Oracle Federal financials. This new

system enhances financial integrity by providing more timely, accurate and reliable financial information for managing the Department’s programs. Education is the first Cabinet level agency to successfully implement Oracle Federal Financials department-wide.

Under the new system, the Department produced financial statements directly from the accounting system for the first time and

now continues to produce these financial statements on a monthly

basis.

We strengthened reconciliation efforts. The Department performed reconciliations on a regular basis with regard to fund balances with Treasury; feeder systems to the general ledger; budgetary to proprietary accounts, accounts payable and related disbursements in transit; suspense accounts; and accounts receivable/

guaranty agency reserves. The Department benefited from having

additional reviews of these reconciliations to improve the accuracy,

completeness, and timeliness of the reconciliations. We improved

monitoring and tracking of confirmed grant and guaranty agency

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data. The Department benefited from independent confirmations of

financial data from grant recipients at the award level such as

available funds, obligations and cash drawdowns, and FFEL loan

receivable balances at the guaranty agency level. The Department

completed GA loan portfolio reconciliations for the first time in a

number of years. These two confirmation efforts helped ensure that

the Department’s and our partner’s records were in balance. We

performed ongoing reviews of the core financial aid eligibility system we call the National Student Loan Data System. The Department continued its ongoing efforts to review the accuracy of data

in the National Student Loan Data System. NSLDS is a data base

that includes loan level data for all student loans, 22 million.

The No. 1 priority of the Department of Education is to help educate children and close the achievement gaps so no child is left behind. Maintaining our financial management and integrity will

help us create the culture of accountability necessary to ensure this

priority is met. I believe you will find that our efforts over the last

2 years demonstrate our commitment to making the Department of

Education a model agency of financial management excellence and

to maintaining the level of effort it took to achieve our first unqualified opinion since 1997.

One of the objectives in our strategic plan is to earn the President’s Quality Award. I hope to be able to tell you a year from now

that we have accomplished this goal as well. I would be happy to

answer any questions you may have. Thank you for your attention.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Martin.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Martin follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Williams.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the major financial management challenges faced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,

its progress in addressing them and challenges that remain. As you

know, in January we issued our performance and accountability series on management challenges and program risks at major agencies, including USDA. The report for USDA focused on a number

of major management challenges including enhancing financial

management and continued the high risk designation for Forest

Service financial management. For many years, USDA struggled to

improve its financial management activities, but inadequate accounting systems and related procedures and controls hampered its

ability to get a clean opinion on its financial statements. After 8

consecutive years of not being able to render an opinion, USDA’s

Office of Inspector General issued an unqualified, or clean opinion,

on USDA’s fiscal year 2002 financial statements reporting that significant progress had been made in improving overall financial

management. To achieve this unqualified opinion, USDA made

progress in its financial accounting and reporting in areas such as

estimating its food stamp program receivables and improving its

implementation of the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990. Also, the

Forest Service received its first-ever unqualified opinion on its fiscal year 2002 financial statements, which represents noteworthy

progress from prior years when the OIG was unable to express an

opinion.

To achieve this unqualified opinion, the Forest Service’s top management dedicated considerable resources and focused staff efforts

to address accounting and reporting deficiencies that had prevented

a favorable opinion in the past. For example, during fiscal year

2002, the Forest Service formed a reconciliation strike team to resolve longstanding real and personal property accounting deficiencies. While we considered obtaining a clean opinion, a positive

step, USDA and the Forest Service need to continue their efforts

to address material internal control weaknesses that still exist. For

example, USDA and the Forest Service need to continue to address

the problems with their legacy systems to improve integration of

the financial management architecture, make timely reconciliation

of their property systems with the general ledger, and correct inconsistencies in their accounting processes.

As provided in the President’s management agenda and by the

Joint Financial Management Improvement Program principles, obtaining financial accountability goes far beyond an unqualified

opinion on financial statements and includes measures such as financial management systems that routinely provide timely, reliable

and useful financial information and no material internal control

weaknesses or material noncompliance with laws and regulations

and Federal financial management improvement act of 1996 requirements.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize that USDA has

made significant progress in addressing this major challenge relating to financial management and continues to do so. At the same

time, before USDA is able to achieve and sustain financial accountability and produce relevant, reliable and timely information to efVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:31 Oct 16, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89718.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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fectively manage the Department, it and its component agencies,

particularly the Forest Service, must resolve some very difficult

issues. This concludes my statement and I would be happy to answer any questions that you or members of the committee may

have.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Williams.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Williams follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Ms. Calbom.

Ms. CALBOM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Towns. As Mr. Williams just mentioned this January GAO issued our performance

and accountability series which included the Department of Education as well as Agriculture and others. The report for Education

focused on a number of management challenges, and as you were

mentioning, continued the high risk designation for student aid

programs. You asked me to focus my testimony today on two areas

in that report. These are first Education’s efforts to reduce fraud,

waste, abuse and mismanagement in its student aid programs; and

second, to improve its financial management to help build a highperforming agency.

As Mr. Martin outlined, Education has spent significant time and

effort in addressing these challenges and has been very successful

in making real management improvements across the agency.

However while Education has made significant progress similar to

Agriculture, internal control and system weaknesses remain in

both the student aid program and with financial management overall that will require continued commitment and vigilance on the

part of Education’s management to resolve.

In the student aid program, education has faced challenges in

four areas. The first continuing challenge relates to systems integration issues. Education has spent millions of dollars to integrate

and modernize its many financial aid systems in an effort to provide more information and better service to students, parents, institutions and lenders. However, the Department still needs to

complete development of an institutional blueprint for how it will

carry out these activities. And this is commonly called an enterprise architecture. This is really key to ensuring that you have consistent system design and compatibility across the organization.

The second challenge has been reducing fraud and error in student

aid application and disbursement processes.

In a major effort to address this issue, the Department has instituted pilot programs with the IRS to match income reported on

student aid applications with Federal tax returns and continues to

work to achieve legislation needed to implement these efforts on a

broader scale. The third continuing challenge is minimizing and

collecting defaulted student loans. Education has made great

strides in this area but needs to communicate its progress by

issuing timely and complete performance reports to the Congress.

And finally like other Federal agencies, education must address serious human capital issues. In 2002, the Department issued a comprehensive 5-year capital human plan that outlines steps and timeframes for improving human capital management. It will be an important that education focus continuously on implementation of the

plan to achieve results.

I would now like to turn more specifically to financial management challenges. Weaknesses in Education’s financial management

and information systems have limited its ability to achieve one of

its key goals, which is improving financial management to help

build a high performing agency. Significant progress toward this

goal was recently made when Education received an unqualified

opinion on its financial statements.

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And as many of us have already discussed today while this is an

important milestone for the Department, significant internal control and system weaknesses remain that must be addressed for

Education to meet the end goal of timely, relevant, reliable information to manage the agency on a day to day basis. Education has

taken many actions over the last several years to improve its financial management and address the weaknesses identified in previous financial statement audits. Education’s auditors recently reported that they have put in place several new processes during fiscal year 2002 to improve financial management and that a new

general ledger system was installed. These are key steps in achieving the ultimate end goal.

However the auditors reported that inadequate internal controls

continued to impair the Department’s ability to accumulate, analyze and present reliable financial information. While improvements were noted in the latter part of the fiscal year, the auditor

reported that the Department needs to place additional focus on

reconciliation procedures, account analysis and the overall financial

reporting process. This will be especially critical when beginning

with fiscal year 2004, Education and other major agencies will be

required to produce their audited financial statements within 45

days after the fiscal year compared to the 120 days currently.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend Education

management for their dedication and persistence in addressing

major challenges relating to the student aid programs and financial

management. I would also like to encourage them to remain steadfast in their efforts to reach their end goal of producing timely, relevant, reliable information to efficiently and effectively manage the

agency and provide full accountability to stakeholders. That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Calbom follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Thank each of you for your testimonies and we will

proceed to questions. Again, we’ll use 5 minutes as a rough framework for the three of us who are here today. I guess Mr. McPherson and Mr. Martin, in reading your testimony, Mr. McPherson,

yours was focused more on the personnel and kind of empowering

the personnel to take the lead and I quote, ‘‘the unreasonable individual or person to get the job done.’’ Mr. Martin, your testimony

was on the personnel, but also more on the structural changes, internal changes. And we are certainly grateful for all of our public

servants who are doing their best to serve the public. Given that

the clean audit was the first in your 140-year history at the Department of Agriculture, and just the second for the Department of

Education and the first clean audit in 5 years, what is your comfort

level that the changes you have made will result in, say, 3 years

from now if not all different personnel, but different personnel are

there that the structural changes, internal controls, data integrity

that we will have a continuation of a clean audit history and not

be talking about once again, the first one in another 3 years or another one in 5 years, your comfort level that your changes are going

to result in truly clean audits?

Mr. MCPHERSON. There are several factors that give me comfort

in that regard. One, all except one of my direct reports are career

civil servants so that leadership operating with the principles that

we have implemented will sustain itself. Second, we have made

progress in depth, meaning it is not a mile wide and an inch deep.

We have changed business processes. We have changed to a common computing system by converting 17 agencies. We have reorganized the National Financial Center into lines of business with one

separate line of business called the Controller Operations Divisions

dedicated for the first time solely to performing work for the USDA

agencies. So I think those rudimentary but fundamental changes

are of a sustaining nature. We have not just gone for quick hits,

but where we have made changes, we have done it so the process

sustains itself.

Mr. MARTIN. We at the Department are currently producing very

accurate monthly financial statements from our Oracle system. We

push a button and we generate statements monthly. I think this

system will permit us to continue as far as we can see into the future to be able to produce accurate financial statements. We also

have revised and improved our reconciliation and account analysis

procedures. We have numerous working groups in place that address specific account groups. So we think we have the structures

in place for us to continue improving our reconciliation processes

going into the future. And we have a very strong and committed

staff of career civil servants. I believe that they are as serious

about all of our changes and improvements as the political employees are.

So I am very confident that the Department of Education will be

able to obtain clean opinions this year on an accelerated basis, and

going forward in future years.

Mr. PLATTS. I hope we are accurate in those statements and I do

commend you on the tremendous improvements you have made

and your personal commitments to continuing that effort, and that

it’s not just for this year or next year, but a long-term change in

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the mentality that we don’t go another 140 years without a clean

audit. The OMB issued some new guidelines in May regarding a

number of the issues under the President’s Management Agenda,

including financial management guidelines. And if both of you

could comment on these new guidelines and how you think they’ll

impact you and what you are doing or perhaps not because you are

already on track to fulfill these new guidelines?

Mr. MARTIN. I support the initiative. It gives us a deadline on

which to focus the numerous actions on which we’re already working; the accelerated November 15 deadline for audited statements;

resolution of auditor identified integrity act; material weaknesses

and internal control, particularly the material weakness related to

IT security. We believe many actions will be successfully completed

prior to the July 1, 2004 target date, for example, the foreign

school recertification material weakness and the material data

quality weakness and we are making a lot of strides in IT security.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I support the standards that have been set. We

had already set a goal of reducing material weaknesses by 50 percent this year and eliminating them by 2004. We have adopted 1

year early the November 14 date for our Performance and Accountability Report. We have turned in quarterly statements in fiscal

year 2003 in accordance with the OMB guidelines, in fact, a week

or two early. So we seem to be on track for meeting the standards,

all of which are very valuable and legitimate standards.

Mr. PLATTS. I now yield to the ranking member, Mr. Towns for

the purpose of questions.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To you, Mr. McPherson,

the Forest Service is an agency which was singled out by the GAO

as needing significant improvements. In fact, it has been on GAO’s

high risk for the last 4 years. What are the root causes of the problems that the Forest Service has? Does senior management at

these agencies give financial management a great enough priority

or are the accounting systems inherently worse? Do they face structural or programmatic problems. What is really going on over

there?

Mr. MCPHERSON. Congressman, my observations since coming on

board, the root causes are the following: One, a lot of deferred

work, meaning work that simply had not been performed in previous years, manifesting itself in a number of unreconciled cash

items or not having performed current physical inventories on the

property. That work was performed in 2002 to get current. The

other things you mentioned, we have had excellent support from

the leadership of the Forest Service starting with Under Secretary

Mark Ray and the Chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth, as

my business partners in addressing these issues forthrightly and

realistically.

You mentioned systems and systems are a root cause. Forest

Service had converted to this standard general accounting system

a few years ago. The remaining work relates to feeder systems and

feeder systems involving the management of property, for example.

So that is a remaining area of attention, the subsystems or the

feeder systems that support accounting operations. Finally in the

area of financial management, because the Forest Service is a decentralized organization with 32,000 employees in some 600 units

51

in the field, we are looking for ways to concentrate knowledge, skill

and process to take the excitement out of some of the accounting

for Forest Service to make it simpler and to reduce some of the

complexity.

I’ll give you a specific. When I came aboard, Forest Service had

620 million account records, and I assure you there is no enterprise

in the United States that has that many accounting records. Half

of those are in a data warehouse, half of them are in the general

accounting system. And it has to do with cost allocation and tracking of costs, and it is just an inordinate amount of complexity that

does not bring with it additional value and accountability. So we

have worked with the Forest Service to take out some of the unnecessary complexity. So those are some of the items.

Mr. TOWNS. You know I am trying to figure out and don’t think

I am not happy about it. I want you to know that I’m happy that

you are able to accomplish this, but I am not sure as to how you

did it. Did you use consultants or hire some new folks? Did they

wake up—I mean the people that were there? I am trying to figure

out how did you get to this point. I want you to know that I am

happy you are there.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I appreciate both your happiness and your support. I started with helping people to believe it was possible. The

first Forest Service meeting I had was with their leadership group

in October 2001 shortly after I came aboard just prior to September

11 at the Shoreham Hotel over here. And I set the goal of sufficient

internal and data integrity to get a clean audit in Forest Service

for the year 2002.

The technical work really was taking their business processes

that related to their financials, that is how do they reconcile cash,

how do they maintain the accounting on property and reengineered

those processes and perform work that had not been performed

previously to bring them current. Along the way we reinforced that

with the proper organizational structure and the proper staffing

particularly at home office here in Washington, the central headquarters. There is work that needs to be done in the field in that

regard. So, it really was being effective and being bold in the

changes because what was there was not working properly and so

we had to change it.

Mr. TOWNS. My time has expired. Thank you.

Mr. PLATTS. I would like to recognize the vice chair of the subcommittee, the gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. Blackburn.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you all for being here. I know Mr. Williams and Ms. Calbom have been with us before, and we appreciate

that you come back and that you take the time to come before us.

I have a series of questions that I want to ask, and Mr. McPherson

and Mr. Martin, I am going to start with you and if we could kind

of move these back and forth I would appreciate it.

First of all looking at FFMIA, does it really matter and do you

see it as a help or a hindrance when you are choosing Federal management systems. And Mr. McPherson and Mr. Martin, if each of

you would answer that.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I think it’s helpful. I am not sure any document

or one set of standards is a driver. I think the experience of people

who have worked with accounting processes and chosen systems

52

and implemented systems is as important. But I think it’s helpful

in setting common expectations but it by itself does not cause

change.

Mr. MARTIN. I believe that FFMIA does indeed matter. It serves

as a driver for agencies to become compliant with the U.S. Standard General Ledger and Federal accounting standards. It also sets

high standards for systems security and integration. The Joint Financial Management Improvement Program testing establishes a

floor for financial systems operability. However a JFMIP certificate

does not convey compliance with FFMIA. It does however mean

that the system has the ability, if configured and integrated correctly, to become FFMIA compliant.

For example, the standard general ledger chart of accounts, an

agency’s specific pro forma accounting entries, must be established

in a new system by an agency. The collating structure established

in the system must also enable staff to perform reconciliations of

agencies specific feeder systems. The system must be able to handle data transformations and other types of summarizations. Reporting should be keyed off the general ledger and be produced

with the push of a button. This often requires an agency to design

complex report mappings that tie appropriations to statement line

items. And this is especially true for the statement of net costs,

which is tied to strategic initiatives that are agency specific.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you. Mr. Williams and Ms. Calbom,

what immediate steps should USDA and Education take to be in

compliance with FFMIA. What, in your opinion, are the immediate

steps that they need to take? Mr. Williams.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think Ted has hit on that point about the systems, subsystems, the feeder systems that the agency is in the

process of reengineering, replacing, upgrading, etc. I think once the

agency gets control or gets a handle on that particular control

weakness then it will be headed in the right direction to address

some of the weaknesses and noncompliance issues that the IGs reported in the past as far as the Act of 1996.

Ms. CALBOM. Education put in a new financial management system in 2002, the Oracle system, and it is designed to be compliant

with FFMIA. The problem for fiscal year 2002 that was reported

by the auditors really had a lot to do with some of the system’s implementation issues and those kind of cascaded into other things,

into reconciliations and some other problems. So hopefully, if the

system is up and running, as it is supposed to be now, then we

should see an improvement in that area once we go through the

next financial statement audit for 2003.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Now how extensive do you think the needed

management reforms are? Do they need to go through all the field

offices with this or is everything pretty much headquartered here

and then what do you think the compliance will end up costing?

Ms. CALBOM. I would have no idea of the cost of the compliance.

I think you are still talking about just FFMIA compliance? I think

we are talking about really getting over some of the glitches that

were experienced in implementing a new system. So the system is

already in place, it is up and running, so hopefully if the glitches

are cleaned up then you know they will be in compliance. But time

will tell and the next audit will tell.

53

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Williams, same for you.

Mr. WILLIAMS. It’s going to be a process in which, as stated earlier, if they get these systems in place, the agency did not get in

this position overnight. It’s going to take some time. I think USDA

has got a strategic plan which lays out over the years what it intends to do to address the problems. And once it is implemented

and those systems are modified, upgraded, etc., they should be able

to be in compliance. Now what that will cost and whether the current timeframe that the agency’s laid out is reasonable, only time

will tell. I think the office has put procedures in place where they

can go back and revisit the plan to make sure we are on track and

people are being held accountable for various steps along the way.

And as they go through that process, time will tell the success and

getting compliant.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. And you do not have an estimation of what you

think the time on the cost would be.

Mr. WILLIAMS. There’s a plan that the office has put together, a

remediation plan that calls for being in compliance by the year

2006. That is the current document. But what it will cost, I could

not say at the current time.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir. May I continue? Thank you,

Mr. Chairman? The other thing, Mr. Williams and Ms. Calbom, I

will come back to you on this, if the timeline and the benchmarks

are not met, do you think it proper be appropriate to have a penalty in place, some type of penalty format for these—for the accountabilities, the stated accountabilities not being met or either

with the dollars budgeted to bring this into compliance, if it is overbudgeted, there should be some penalties that are enacted there.

Ms. CALBOM. We haven’t really assessed that issue and I

wouldn’t want to comment on that since we really haven’t done any

kind of a study to determine what the potential benefit of that type

of a procedure would be.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Williams.

Mr. WILLIAMS. I would like to focus more on the phrase of the

word ‘‘accountability.’’ I think we need to hold people accountable

for what they are supposed to be doing in their jobs. But as Ms.

Calbom said, as far as the penalty, we have not done an assessment to determine if there should be certain penalties for not meeting certain dates but there should definitely be some accountability.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Chairman, just as I thought through this

process as we go through this, I think that you know we hear repeatedly of—and I commend the departments and all involved for

having time lines and for having stated goals, but I think it may

be worth our efforts to look at possibly what would be a method

for some penalties for not meeting accountability standards or time

lines or projects that run on and continue to go over budget year

after year and see if there is something that in so doing, if we can

help these departments and these individuals who are managing

through these situations to meet those time lines, and some way

to incentivize that process.

Mr. PLATTS. I think what we’re all after is that at the end of the

day is having accountability, and how best to achieve it. I think

within the administration, there certainly is that focus in how they

54

are establishing their annual budget request and accountability

and what they are requesting. And that certainly, at the end of the

day, hits each of the departments. If you are not meeting timeframes and goals set that may be reflected in what the White

House sends over and asks for your departments and how much

faith you want to continue to have in putting additional dollars in

the programs if you are not meeting what you have established as

your ultimate goals.

Certainly, Ms. Blackburn, it is something that we are glad to

continue to look at as a subcommittee and with your staff. Coming

back when I asked earlier about where we are today and the focus

with both departments and the structural changes and the employees being invigorated to achieve the clean audits, I would be curious in asking Mr. McPherson and Mr. Martin’s their opinions that

3, 4 years from now, we will still see clean opinions based on

changes we made for each of you and from GAO’s perspective.

Your comment, Mr. Williams, is time will tell. As we sit here

today, do you think the changes we have in place truly are going

to have long-term lasting results, or are we going to continue to see

the need for the heroic efforts?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, let me start with a concept that I like to

talk about, and that is in developing internal control standards. We

talk about setting the tone at the top and I think that is what Mr.

McPherson has done. He set the tone at the top, that we will address these weaknesses, we will correct these problems. And I believe that if you look at some of the things that he has done and

some of the things that he has underway—I will give you an example when the effort first started, USDA established having strike

teams to address some of the these reconciliation issues, etc.

And if you look at that particular process, one of the things that

we at GAO observed is that when the teams identify a problem in

a particular area, rather than just correcting those specifically

identified problems, the teams drilled down and tried to identify

what are the root causes for this particular problem. And once you

identify what the root causes of the problems are, then you put corrective actions and you correct those root causes, then you have set

the stage for that problem not to occur again in the future. So I

think things like that, if they continue with these types of projects

and exercises, then things will be set in place so that regardless

of who’s at the top that the effort to achieve financial accountability should continue.

Mr. PLATTS. Ms. Calbom.

Ms. CALBOM. And I would agree with all those things. You know,

one of the real key things is the systems, and frankly, the Federal

Government, most agencies have been handicapped over the years

because they have outdated systems that don’t really do what they

are expected to do, and that is to produce financial statements.

So it was kind of like putting together a patchwork of systems

to try to prepare financial statements, and as I said it was just a

handicap to begin with. Now with new systems being put in place

that are designed to produce financial statements and the type of

financial information that really is needed to manage, that is a tremendous hurdle that agencies like Education now have gotten over.

But it’s not just systems, though. You have to have processes and

55

people too. You have to have the reconciliation processes in place.

You have to have qualified people to do the work, and as Mr. Williams was saying, you’ve got to have the people at the top. You’ve

got to have very, very senior management that is willing to put the

resources into doing these kinds of processes and procedures on a

consistent, systematic basis. Otherwise it can all fall apart again

very easily.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you.

Mr. McPherson, in getting to a specific example of using technology to have more accurate information and in this case deal

with improper payments in 2002, the Department met the goal regarding the Food Stamps Program of now having 89 percent of the

electronic transfer occur. My understanding, that has a huge benefit in the sense of eliminating wrongful payments.

My question actually was being at 89 percent, is there an ultimate goal to get to 98, 99? If not, what is the greatest hurdle to

getting as close to 100 percent as possible so that there is less

chance of inappropriate payments being made?

Mr. MCPHERSON. We expect the percentage to go up. The reason

it should go up is that there are four entities that have not converted to electronic benefits, California being the largest. California

is in the process of rolling out that system, implementing it. And

then we also have Delaware and Iowa and Guam to go. So the percentage ought to go up, and you’re absolutely correct, it is a major

effective tool in reducing erroneous payments.

Mr. PLATTS. Taking that history with the food stamps and looking at the School Meals Program, my understanding is that there

have been pilot programs to use similar type approaches with

school meals. Could you give us some background in where we

stand on those pilots and what have we learned from them and

how we can maybe use that same knowledge from the Food Stamp

Program with the School Meals Program?

Mr. MCPHERSON. There are some pilots going on in the school

meals electronic commodity ordering system, which is a Web-based

ordering—order control system, that I think over 50 agencies

around the United States have—are piloting. So it is going well. I

think it’s too early to say the full results of all of that. But just a

general statement. The more electronic controls, the checks and

balances are better on all these sorts of delivery of cash. So it really has to do with the productivity of cash in any of these programs.

So we expect that area to be fruitful as well. And as you may know,

Under Secretary Eric Bost has had some good experience in this regard at the State level and has done a good job in regard to this

work through the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. McPherson. I’m going to ask one

more question and then allow other committee members also. I

think we’re going to have a vote in the next 5 to 10 minutes. We’ll

try to get as many questions in before we need to break to go over

so that we don’t keep you here after that if that happens.

Mr. Martin, it’s kind of a followup with the use of technology. As

we use technology to have more accurate payments and keep better

records and thus have a better understanding of our financial position, one of the issues that was addressed in previous audits for the

Department of Education as well as by the GAO was the security

56

of the information in your systems, and I wonder if you could update us on where you are and what you’ve done to try to improve

the confidentiality of information in the Department’s data systems.

Mr. MARTIN. We have a major IT security initiative taking place

now. Our office, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, working

with the Chief Information Officer and Federal Student Aid, we

have a plan in place, and we are directing that plan in addressing

the IT security material weakness. We believe that we will have

most of the issues related to that IT security material weakness resolved by the end of this year, a good share of those resolved by

the end of the fiscal year and most all resolved by the end of the

calendar year.

Mr. PLATTS. Is that something that you’re sharing with or coordinating with GAO as far as their past concerns they’ve raised? Or

I don’t know if GAO has had a chance to look at that yet, what’s

being done.

Ms. CALBOM. We haven’t been in to take a look at that recently.

We will be going in to followup on some of our previous recommendations probably sometime this summer, which will be just

a quick look to see what kinds of things have been done. You know,

of course the IG has continued to report some additional weaknesses in this area, but I do know that the Department has some

solid plans in place to address these issues.

Mr. MARTIN. And we are working with the IG in resolving these

issues, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you.

Mr. Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you. Mr. McPherson, Federal credit agencies

have been required to estimate the cost of their loan programs in

accordance with the requirements of the Federal Credit Reform Act

of 1990. Since fiscal year 1992, USDA was recently able to estimate

their loan subsidy cost for its credit programs, which totaled about

$74 billion. Why did it take so long to address this issue, and can

we be assured that USDA will continue to be able to make reliable

estimates?

Mr. MCPHERSON. I can’t answer why it took so long because I

wasn’t there. I know that we made a big effort in 2001 to complete

that work, and we were able to do it for the Rural Development

Agency, which has about in nominal terms $70 billion. We have

about $100 billion in total, and as you suggest, $74 billion on a

present value basis.

So we made progress in Rural Development and got that behind

us in 2001. Last year we were able to complete the work in the

Farm Service Agency and the Commodity Credit Corp., so that was

key to completing the clean opinion in that agency.

And it is sustainable. I’ve looked at those models myself in detail.

I’ve looked at the people that operate them, and while it was a

complex task, once achieved it should well sustain itself. In fact,

we’ve been able to cut the time it takes to prepare those calculations from what used to take weeks to really a matter of days

through automation. So I think that one—that breakthrough is behind us.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you.

57

Mr. Williams and Ms. Calbom, do you feel that a lot of the problems is the fact that they have had improper technology or not adequate technology to be able to answer the questions that need to

be answered in order to get information that was required? Could

you sort of just comment on that? I know you’ve seen a lot of these

and you’ve been there for quite some time, and I’m just curious as

to this fact.

Ms. CALBOM. Are you speaking of the credit reform area or just

in general?

Mr. TOWNS. In general.

Ms. CALBOM. In general?

Mr. TOWNS. Yes.

Ms. CALBOM. I think it’s a combination of things. You know, like

I said before, the systems that most of these agencies were using

were not meant to develop this type of financial information. You

know, in some cases we didn’t have people in the right positions

that were trained to do the work that they were being asked to do,

and when you haven’t asked anyone to be accountable for years

and years and years and then all of a sudden we pass the CFO Act

and then we’re asking agencies to issue audited financial statements. Then we’re asking them to be accountable, and you’ve got

cultural issues there, systems issues, people issues, all kinds of

things going on. And I think as everybody has mentioned, you

know, when you’re in a real deep hole, it’s hard to get out, and

many of these agencies were in a real deep hole. And many of them

are starting to get out of that hole and to have accountability.

I think I can speak particularly to Education. I believe they’ve

turned the corner on this. They’re on the right track. It’s just a

matter of a little more time, particularly to demonstrate that this

is sustainable and to clean up some of these remaining weaknesses

that were left over from the last fiscal year.

Mr. WILLIAMS. For USDA I would agree with all of those points.

I think you have a scenario there in which financial management

was not a top priority in the past and you’re talking about an organization that is decentralized and you would have people in the

Northeast maybe accounting for transactions one way, people in

the Northwest accounting for transactions another way, that decentralization not being a top priority.

A lot of times that information was incorrect, and when you

bring all that information in together, you’re basically not going to

be able to produce reliable financial statements.

And I would like to add as far as USDA is concerned, I think it

is also a top factor that a lot of their systems were, and in some

cases these feeder systems that we’re talking about are old and

they need to be upgraded and in some cases just totally replaced.

And I think the agency is on track to address this particular issue.

Mr. TOWNS. Right. Thank you very much. Let me ask, you

stressed it a lot, Mr. McPherson, and, Mr. Martin, you also mentioned in your testimony, you praised the career civil servants who

worked hard to enable the Department achieve a clean financial

last year, and you point to these career employees as the main reason for continuing optimism for financial management improvements in the future.

58

Just how important are the career civil servants in achieving

progress, and what lesson can other agencies learn from your experience?

Mr. MCPHERSON. I would say they are very important, and the

lesson I learned is how underinvested we were, and are probably

other Federal agencies, in training for those career civil servants.

We just last week had 234 people come to Washington for 21⁄2 days

in a series of modules of very specific techniques, to include reconciliations, property, intercompany eliminations, a whole suite of

knowledge that they need to do their jobs and to understand how

all of that is integrated with the systems and so forth, and we had

two career civil servants address those people as part of that curriculum. One was Don Hammond from Treasury. One was Joe Kull

from OMB, very successful career civil servants. Joe Kull gave a

very effective presentation that I asked him to do as to what he

would look for if he were to hire anyone in that audience today,

and he reflected on what one needs to be equipped with in terms

of attributes and professional skills and so forth.

So that’s a very valuable thing, just to invest in solid training for

the people.

Mr. TOWNS. Right.

Mr. Martin, could you comment on? That is my final question.

Mr. MARTIN. Yes. When Secretary Paige took office, he formed a

management improvement team that was comprised exclusively of

senior level career employees. These employees developed the Secretary’s Blueprint for Management Excellence, which laid the foundation for most of the improvements that were—that occurred at

the Department of Education. So the career people were extremely

important, and they continue to play a major role.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much. Thank all of you. I yield back,

Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

Ms. Blackburn.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Calbom, following up on what you said about stopping digging when you’re in a

hole, coming out of Tennessee and the country music industry

being near and dear to us there, I’ll just let you know there is a

great song by Randy Travis talking about stop digging when you’re

in a hole. So if you need something as an example, you can look

that one up.

Let’s see. And I’m sure if y’all gave me a chance, to our ranking

member down there and others, I could think of a lot of other of

our country songs out of Nashville or our blues songs out of Memphis that we could tie back into a lot of what we’re talking about.

Mr. McPherson and Mr. Martin, Mr. Williams was speaking a

moment ago about centralizing some of your operations, and I’ve

heard you all talk about computer security and other different

things. As you’ve gone through this process of becoming more technologically aware and having your systems be more of an integrated system, obviously it sounds like what you’re doing from security to application, you are doing both a good bit of front-end and

back-end work.

Now, my question to each of you is are you doing—how are you

breaking this apart? Are you handling it in-house? Are you conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:31 Oct 16, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89718.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tracting it out? If you’re contracting it out, what is the length of

those contracts, and how much are you spending on an annual

basis for those contracts?

Mr. MCPHERSON. Well, in our case, here’s how we approach it.

The first job was to implement a standard accounting system for

discretionary spending, and we did 17 conversions to do that.

That’s kind of a middle level.

We have also in our architecture implemented a data warehouse

and data marts that enable self service by our program agencies

where people can write their own queries and manage their own

information.

The remaining building block are these feeder systems that are

old legacy systems that include integrated——

Ms. BLACKBURN. Just a moment there. On those feeder systems,

are you—just for my understanding, when you build those, your

port of entry, is it a—would it be a front-end Web-based system,

or is it something they’re logging—going straight into the back end

on that data management?

Mr. MCPHERSON. Most of our interfaces are direct. We do not

have a lot of Web-based accounting systems. My choice when coming was to finish what had been started. Our next migration will

be to more of a Web-based system.

So we have warehouse architecture, and the emphasis is on feeder systems. And in our case feeder systems are large integrated acquisition systems, procurement systems. They could be property

management for things like 22,000 buildings, 1,200 space assignments in 766 GSA buildings in over 400 cities and towns. So these

are massive accounting operations.

In performing the work, we own it internally. We own the responsibility. I would not likely delegate that ownership externally.

What we do is have business partners that have helped implement

some of these systems, and we have project teams for a suite of the

feeder systems.

Ms. BLACKBURN. And when you bring those business partners in

line, is it a project until the completion of the project, or how are

you writing those contracts?

Mr. MCPHERSON. Those contracts typically will be—could range

from development and implementation to maintenance, and what

we want to do is cut the time it takes to execute an implementation, some sort of system change, and then migrate aggressively to

just an operating cost for maintaining it.

And my goal is to drive down the costs of this work, because my

sense is instinctively it’s too high across government, and it’s too

high in our case because of the labor-intensive manual processes

that were allowed to accumulate over the years. So the replacement through technology has a cost saving as well.

Ms. BLACKBURN. How many outsourced contractors or outside

contractors do you have—have you had working on those projects?

Mr. MCPHERSON. I would say for the core systems operated for

headquarters in the lines of business, I’m going to say no more

than a dozen, let’s say, at the most as a guess. Now, remember

through the National Finance Center we service 120 other Federal

agencies, so I’m excluding that as it relates to payroll projects or

the management of the recordkeeping for the Thrift Investment

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Plan with $100 billion and 3 million customers there. But just for

the accounting operations, it’s not a lot, but it’s very focused.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Mr. Martin.

Mr. MARTIN. We have an integrated platform called EDCAPS, or

Education Central Automated Processing System, and this platform integrates all of our business processes, procurement, travel,

our Oracle financial management system, all of the systems that

we use on the—my side of the house. FSA, the Federal Student

Aid, they also have a separate Oracle system and I think at least

three contractors, Accenture I think being the largest contractor.

Accenture has several subcontractors that they employ. We have

one major contractor, IBM, now and I think they subcontract a

good share of their work.

The precise dollar amount I would have to get back to the committee on.

Ms. BLACKBURN. If you could submit that for the record, I think

that would be great, the amount of the IBM contract, the Accenture

contract and then any of the others that have worked on building

your system, the separate systems that are in there. I think that

will be helpful to know.

May I ask one other question? Then I’ll be through. OK. Mr.

Martin, when your auditor is giving your internal control reports,

would it be helpful to you all if they also issued to you opinions

on your internal controls?

Mr. MARTIN. I believe those internal controls as presented satisfy

all of the professional standards. So I don’t see any additional utility with any more information in those reports.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Mr. McPherson.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I’d agree with that. I think there are perhaps

things such as audit committees or things beyond just normal government practices that could be considered in addition, but I agree

with what Jack says about that particular item.

Ms. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Ms. Blackburn.

Mr. Martin, as one who about 2 weeks back made my last student loan payment from law school—and I’m actually waiting to

get the statement back saying I’m completely paid off to celebrate.

But I’m grateful for the Direct Student Loan Program, because my

undergrad degree and my law school degree would not have been

achievable without that assistance. So the integrity of those programs and all who participate who actually fulfill their obligations,

that is something that I have a longstanding interest in. As I pay

mine back, I want to be sure everyone else is paying theirs back.

And my understanding is that in the Office of Federal Student

Aid, there has been some significant technology investments to improve the tracking of—whether it be the Pell grants or the Direct

Loan Program. I wonder if you could update us on where that

stands and what you envision for the improvements being made regarding the Office of Federal Student Aid.

Mr. MARTIN. Well, I think in terms of what we need to satisfy

GAO, we’ve got material weaknesses that we need to improve related to IT security and other FMFIA material weaknesses.

Mr. PLATTS. And that relates to being on the at-risk list with

GAO to satisfy their requirements to get off that risk list?

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Mr. MARTIN. Right. Yes.

Mr. PLATTS. What’s your timeframe you think as far as trying to

satisfy the——

Mr. MARTIN. I think that where we’ll be—you’ll be reviewing

probably in 2005, I guess?

Ms. CALBOM. Yes. Probably during fiscal year 2004 we’ll be looking at what’s been done in preparation for our high-risk assessment

that we will be issuing in January 2005.

Mr. PLATTS. That was my followup, is the Department, in this

case Department of Education, takes action to address issues that

I guess result in being on that list. It’s my understanding that the

GAO—that your process has always been just a 2-year update, that

there are not interim updates?

Ms. CALBOM. Yes. Our policy is to do it on a biennial basis. You

know, part of the reason for doing that is that really allows time

to demonstrate sustainability of the improvements that have been

made. For example, with the Department of Education, they did

get a clean opinion in 1997, but then they weren’t able to sustain

that and they weren’t able to even repeat it until just recently.

We’ve seen that with some other agencies as well. Transportation

had that issue a few years back as well. So we want to give some

time to make sure that, as we’ve been talking here today, that

these are permanent type improvements.

The other thing is, GAO spends a lot of time and effort in doing

those high-risk and performance and accountability series updates,

and it is something that we think is a valuable thing to do for the

Congress. But because it is such a big investment, we really want

to limit that to a biennial-type process and not make exceptions on

an agency by agency basis, because then we’d have everybody

wanting to have an out of cycle assessment. So our policy is to stick

with the biennial assessment.

Mr. PLATTS. But you will have ongoing interaction with the Department that—as they work to address the shortcomings you have

identified, that they are on the right track as opposed to just waiting till you get to that next 2 years and——

Ms. CALBOM. Definitely. In fact, the Department has offered to

provide us with a series of briefings on the improvements that have

been made in the student aid programs and we definitely are going

to take them up on that, because we want to be as up to date as

we can be and offer advice as we go.

In addition, we have several ongoing jobs at the Department that

really we do in order to build toward the high-risk update. As a

matter of fact we’re doing planning agency-wide at GAO right now

to make sure that we’ve got a body of work planned for each of the

areas that are currently on the high-risk list so that we’re in a position to properly assess those, again, for the 2005 date.

Mr. PLATTS. OK. Thank you. Maybe a final area of specific inquiry, Mr. McPherson, with the Department of Agriculture is on

the issue of debt, but I guess in a broad sense with your Department having—my understanding is about a third of all nontax debt

or credit being issued by Agriculture. In the 2002 fiscal year you

jumped from 14 percent to 96 percent in the eligible debt that was

referenced—or referred to the Treasury cross-servicing program, I

guess, that kind of resulted in such a significant result—or inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:31 Oct 16, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\89718.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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crease in the referral and what you see for the future in that type

of action.

Mr. MCPHERSON. It was a significant and invaluable improvement. About $300 million more in cash collections going to the

Treasury than otherwise would have been the case. I think the

issue is for us—the management of this hundred billion dollar loan

portfolio in achieving the proper missions of the programs through

the productive use of cash, and to manage those loans, I think

there are four things that are important in addition to things like

being good at collecting delinquent debts.

One is the transaction approval process, and so we’ve emphasized taking a close look at how those transactions are approved.

Two is how those portfolios or cohorts are managed in terms of concentration of risk, early warnings and so forth. Three has to do

with the systems, the use, the application of computing to run a

loan portfolio, to manage a loan portfolio, and a lot of loan systems

probably around the government need to be renovated. We have

some of that work to do.

And then the fourth area is debt collection, credit reform, a

whole other miscellaneous group of techniques and processes that

are brought to managing that portfolio. And I think it’s good to

look at those aggregates where a lot of agencies have particular

agencies or programs dedicated to lending. Any bank, private or

public, is going to look at the whole portfolio and how it’s managed,

and I think that’s where we have gotten some of our gains with

more to come.

Mr. PLATTS. Is that work—the various stage at this point is all

internal, or do you use outside——

Mr. MCPHERSON. It’s principally internal, and my role is sort of

as a policy overseer. I’m not close to the customer. I don’t own

those portfolios. So my role is to influence how those are managed

by Rural Development and the Farm Service Agency who have

agency heads and under secretaries that own that work. But in

tandem, in teaming, we all sort of speak the same language and

are focused on some of these things that we think are most useful.

Mr. PLATTS. And actually your final statement there brings me

to a final question for Mr. Martin and Mr. McPherson. Speaking

the same language and one of the goals of this hearing and of having you testify is to shed some more light on the efforts you have

made and the tremendous success you both have had with your Departments and your fellow colleagues at your Departments in having more financial accountability, is there a regular interaction between the two of you and your—kind of your colleagues in other

Departments in the same positions that you share notes on a regular basis as what’s working in my Department, what’s not, and so

that we aren’t having to reinvent the wheel, per se, in each of the

CFO agencies?

Mr. MARTIN. We have the CFO Council where many of these

issues are discussed, and we have had I think two dinners of CFOs

where we talk about issues that are affecting our respective Departments and where there are common interests. And we have

working groups on—I think there is a working group that deals

with issues related to implementation of the Oracle system, you

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know, where they meet periodically. I think it’s either monthly or

quarterly. So there is——

Mr. PLATTS. Not just at the CFO level but staff——

Mr. MARTIN. And below that, yes.

Mr. PLATTS. Great. Well, hopefully when you’re meeting and your

fellow CFOs get together, they’re listening well when the two of

you speak and taking good notes, and we will hope with time that

we can get DOD to embrace the improvements as well given the

size of that Department’s challenges, but if no other questions——

Mr. TOWNS. I would like to just thank the witnesses, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns, and we do appreciate all

four of you for your time and effort, not just here today but in the

preparation and material you shared and your willingness to continue to be great resources for the members of this subcommittee.

I’d also like to thank both the majority and minority staff members for their efforts regarding this hearing. It’s clear that the

agencies before us have put forth significant efforts to fix various

serious financial management problems, and I commend each of

you and your many, many staff persons who have put forth that

effort in achieving the successes you have in both Departments. We

look forward to hearing similar success stories from your financial

management colleagues throughout the Federal Government as

they learn from your examples and seek to meet the challenges before their Departments.

The record will be kept open for 2 weeks for any additional information to be submitted, and this hearing stands adjourned. Thank

you.

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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