These disclosures helped resolve differences and are required to be reviewed and audited by the agencies' respective auditors. We will work with agencies to formulate additional guidance based on the progress we made this year. Reconciliation Balances of Fund Treasury continues to assist agencies in reconciling their fund balance amount with the amount reported to them by Treasury. The fund balance amount is an agency-level asset account that reflects the available budget spending authority of that agency. Treasury has implemented an internet-based Information Access System that provides agencies information about potential deposit and disbursement discrepancies.
Agencies are responsible for resolving the differences in a timely fashion.
Today, the discrepancies most often are a result of timing differences and are resolved in a few monthly cycles. In order to capitalize on improvements over the last few years, program agencies' reconciliation of fund balances must be a management priority and a routine, on-going accounting function. Agencies have made much progress in institutionalizing the process. To further facilitate this, as more fully discussed later in my statement, Treasury is redesigning its systems to simplify the process to improve the availability of the data. As you have heard, the current state of Federal financial reporting is not satisfactory.