(upbeat music)
-: Okay, I think we'll go ahead and get started.
So, this morning, if you joined me
at the nine 'o clock presentation,
I talked about from the financial report
of the United States government from the aspect of
what are our current audit recommendations,
and what are our plans to address
those audit recommendations?
But while we're working on that,
we're also looking at,
is the current audit approach
and how we're collecting the data
for the financial reporting, is it gonna work?
So if we clean up all these audit recommendations,
get rid of all our material weaknesses,
is it going to work?
Are we gonna be in a good place to where at that point
we can get an opinion?
So that's what we're gonna talk about
in this session today.
And so, this is something that I know
it's talking about, some people might say about me
is that I like to talk about sunshine and rainbows.
And that's what this is.
So I love this presentation, and it's definitely very much
something that I can get really excited about,
because it's talking about ideas,
it's talking about brainstorming,
and I definitely welcome all of your participation.
And then if you have other ideas that you don't see up here,
and you think, hey, this would be a good idea for my agency,
or this would be a good idea at the government-wide level,
definitely share that with me.
Either now during the presentation, or later on,
and my contact information will be at the end,
definitely send that to me.
Because right now, that's what this is,
is just brainstorming, thinking of ideas
on how we can approve it.
And some of the ideas will prove from an agency perspective,
some from a government-wide perspective,
and some from a Treasury perspective.
And even OMB perspective, too,
I think Carol Johnson's out there somewhere.
There she is, halfway back there, okay.
And so, Carol Johnson is here with me today,
'cause she has definitely worked a lot on
all of these ideas that we're gonna talk about
on the current approach, and she will be
very much working with the ones on the future ideas.
So if we have any questions from an OMB perspective,
Carol's definitely here to help us out with that.
So today, like I said,
first we're gonna kind of talk about the current state,
and some progress that we've made,
and some additional agency assistance needed on those.
Not gonna talk a lot about that,
'cause we talked in great detail at nine o'clock
this morning about that, plus they'll be
some more detailed presentations later on,
but we'll touch on that.
But then where we'll really focus on is
what's happening in the near term,
meaning what's happening for fiscal year 19?
And changes that we've made with
the financial reporting and audit model Improvements there.
And then we'll talk about some potential future ideas,
and that'll be where the exciting part comes in, right?
Because that's where we're gonna be just throwing out ideas,
talking about why we're thinking about those ideas,
and then trying to get any additional ideas from all of you.
So this slide, it's like a bad nightmare,
it just continues to follow me around,
'cause I keep saying in every presentation,
this is the sad slide.
And then in every presentation I do, there it is,
it's like my nightmare, every night I have this thing.
So with this slide, as it's stating, in case you weren't
there this morning at nine o'clock when I talked,
it's stating that as a government,
for our financial report of the United States government,
we have received a disclaimer of opinion since 1997.
And we've had the same three major impediments
keeping us from getting an opinion,
so as you can see, DoD, Compilation, and IGT.
We always focus, like I always focus
and I'm always talking about the Compilation
and the IGT one, and I know DoD
is definitely making a lot of progress
from an aspect of it's the first year
they have went through a full financial audit,
and they are making the progress and remediating those.
So, current state.
This is a happy slide, this is a very happy slide.
If you look at this, this shows
awesome progress that we've made as a government
in moving away from that disclaimer of an opinion
that we've had since 1997,
and looking at the results that we've had
just over the last few years,
and this really shows that in some key pictures here.
So the first picture there on the left,
that shows the number of outstanding audit recommendations
at the government-wide level.
So if you look at that, since 2013,
we have reduced our audit recommendations by 60%.
Now, I said this morning that I do see,
I will recognize the slight increase there
between 2018 and 19.
Not proud of that increase.
But this morning, what I was explaining on that is that
we made a lot of progress on some really old audit
recommendations, and we actually had hoped to close,
we actually had to close eight of those.
And we just didn't quite make it over the finish line.
So, if you think about that, from going from 12,
and then if we would have actually closed all eight of them,
we would have been a lot better place.
But at this point, we've made a lot of progress
and we just need to get over the finish line
for those remaining ones there.
And then we did receive a few new audit recommendations
this year, and obviously we have plans in place
to close them this year as well.
So we should be able to see that number
go down with the new audit recommendations
we close this year, and addressing some of those really old
audit recommendations that date back to 2002.
So, the next slide, or the next graph here
showing the great progress is on your IGT differences.
If you look at that, I mean, from IGT differences
perspective, just since 2015,
that chart shows that the IGT differences
have decreased 98%.
So this morning, I had even showed 2014,
and that's a more of a drastic decrease there.
But the reason I don't show it on this graph here
is because kind of gets lost
if you continue to show those numbers.
So if you just think about where we've been
over the past few years, and now with the final number
right now being at $214 billion,
and being able to continue to make the progress we've made
over the past few years, that number is gonna
become immaterial at the government-wide level very soon,
and that is definitely our goal.
Now, another, I think, big accomplishment this year
is that we had two key entities
in the financial report that went through their first audit,
first financial audit.
So DoD, I already said them earlier,
and the General Fund of the United States government.
So with both of them going through their first audits,
yes, they both have a disclaimer still,
and it's a good club to be in right now if you notice,
'cause you have DoD, General Fund, FR,
no, it's definitely not a good club, but anyways.
It seems like something good to say, but anyways.
With those first audits, they have a plan now, right?
They know what they need to do,
they have a list of their audit findings that they have,
and they can now work towards getting to that audit opinion,
just like we are at the government-wide level as well.
So, just a few key areas here on
the progress that we just saw,
and then what's remaining in the current state.
Because we can't forget about the audit recommendations
that I talked about this morning,
our current outstanding audit recommendations.
So definitely, we need to continue that improvement
on intergovernmental differences, we don't wanna let
all of that work that we've done
over the past few years here,
we don't want it to slip away, right?
And if you heard me talk this morning, I said
by just having one transaction, one transaction,
that totaled to $64 billion in differences.
Because it's a $16 billion difference,
but you times it by four because it hits four
reciprocal categories when you're doing
intergovernment eliminations.
And so just having one mistake,
having one disagreement between two trading partners
can change that number,
and can hurt us and move it in the wrong direction.
So we really need to continue to stay focused
on those intergovernmental differences,
and driving them down,
and then continuing to keep those down.
In addition to that, the second thing here is just
getting to that audit opinion for the General Fund.
And the General Fund, obviously I said
they did their first audit opinion,
or the first audit this year and received a disclaimer
for the 2018 audit.
They're still working to get to audibility
and address those and remediate those
audit recommendations that they have.
Definitely I know they already talked this morning,
but they'll be talking more, I think it's at like 3:05
this afternoon, so you can hear more details there
about the General Fund.
But with the General Fund, I can tell you that
a lot of it is about being able to trace the transactions.
And in tracing those transactions, what you will see
is a lot of information that it's gonna be
supplied throughout this conference
about needing to make sure that you have the right
Treasury account symbol, and the right BETC as well.
And so there will be information
to where you'll see a lot of new BETCs being implemented
over the current time in trying to get
to General Fund audibility, and that's what it's for,
is to get that traceability for those transactions
that they need at the General Fund.
Then the third item here is to strengthen processes
for treaties and other international agreements.
I explained earlier that this is definitely
a key area that we're working on.
It actually makes up five of the current 15
audit recommendations that are outstanding,
so it's definitely a top priority of ours.
And it is data cleared back to 2002,
so JO had stated, clear back in 2002 audit,
that we as a government need to be able to have,
ensure that we have complete financial reporting
over treaties and other international agreements.
So we all need to make sure that we're doing that
at our agency level and at the government-wide level.
Okay, so this is an exciting time.
So before we start talking about this,
I want a show of hands of how many people in the room
still, or no, how many people in the room
have done GFRS reporting in the past.?
Okay.
So how many people think you have to do GFRS reporting
for fiscal year 2019?
(laughs) No.
So, that's what this means, is for 2019,
there is no longer a closing package process.
Which means for the agencies,
there is no GFRS reporting required for 2019.
So I'm glad I didn't see a lot of hands come up,
because I know we've been trying to make sure
that we're communicating that, I know we've sent out
a mass email last week or this week
to all the GTAS and GFRS users in case we've missed anybody,
but please make sure that if people don't know
that there will be no agencies needing to have GFRS login
or user IDs and passwords or anything,
'cause you guys will no longer be doing GFRS reporting.
Okay, so.
(audience member speaking faintly)
He asked if they were uploading the notes
to the OMB Max website.
So for third quarter or for year end?
Well, so as part of your submission of your AFR and PAR,
you would be uploading your AFR and PAR footnotes,
but you're not gonna be doing the old GFRS notes.
Okay.
So yes, you still have to do your AFR and PARs,
and you still have to do the footnotes
that go along with those AFR and PARs,
and yeah, they get submitted to OMB Max,
but there will not be any more GFRS reporting.
Okay, so why did we do this,
why did we eliminate the closing package?
Well, in looking at eliminating the closing package,
it was a lot based on the feedback
that we had received from you all.
Back in 2016, when we started populating the agents,
or the financial statement lines based on the GTAS data,
I heard from a lot of you, well,
why don't you just populate my footnotes as well?
Because you guys have the data, right?
I mean, the financial statement line,
I have the SGLs that make up that line.
So therefore I should have the information
that makes up the footnote.
Well, some of them have more detail
than what the USSGLs provide, but for the most part,
for the majority of all the footnotes, you're right,
they do, we do have that information.
And so it was definitely looked at as in
asking you all to do redundant reporting to Treasury,
and also at the same time, getting a second audit
on something that has very similar data.
And that's what the flowchart in the middle there
is showing, where it shows the current process,
so that's the 2018 process,
and it shows how you guys get a full financial statement
audit on your AFR and PAR,
'cause that's required, that's not going away.
But then you submit data to GTAS
that is supposed to match your agency's AFR or PAR,
'cause we do that check, and we make sure that
the GTAS data actually matches back to the AFR and PARs.
And then we would ask for you guys to do the closing package
which we were populating some of that information,
but then we're asking you to key in the information
for the footnotes.
And so it was like, why do we need to do that?
Because at the end of the day, that information
as well in the closing package was supposed to match
the data that you had in GTAS,
which was supposed to match the AFR and the PAR.
So at the end of the day we looked at and we said,
why are we asking agencies to do this?
Because aren't they just given me redundant data
in multiple places?
And the answer was yes, yes you were.
So then we looked at it ourselves and said,
can I use the original source of information,
which is your AFR and PAR,
to get all the data I need for the government-wide?
So we use that GTAS data, of course that's a way
to submit the data to us, and then using that,
that matches your AFR and PAR,
then I can populate the information that we need.
So that's what you'll see here in phase one,
is that you no longer see the closing package process there,
it just goes from your AFR and PAR directly to the GTAS,
and then we're verifying that GTAS data does match
back to the AFR and PARs.
So for 2019, the two sources to populate
the government-wide statements will be your AFR and PARs,
and the GTAS data that you send us.
Okay.
So, if you look at this
not only in reducing the data redundancy,
the other thing I wanted to point out
is the red under the current process
where it has a full financial statement audit
for the AFR and PAR, and a full financial statement audit
for the closing package.
So really, by doing that, we eliminated the requirement
for 40 financial statement audits on that closing package.
Now I know some agencies had the same auditors do both.
Some agencies had an IPA do one,
like the AFR and PAR, and the IG did
the closing package audit.
But at the end of the day,
we're reducing to where there's two separate audits.
Now, but in case any of my auditors are in the room,
it doesn't mean that the data that is being used
to generate the government-wide statements,
that you're getting any less audit coverage over that,
and we'll talk about that next on a couple other slides.
So the same audit coverage is there for the data
that's in the government-wide statements,
but yet we tried to reduce having to have
those two separate audit opinions.
And then doing this, we did work with a CFO subgroup,
the CFO Council subgroup, and it had
agency representation on it, it had Treasury OMB,
had some IGs, and it GAO as well.
So there was a lot of input from all those parties
into this process before it ever was implemented
in what you saw in A-136, in our TFM-4700,
and then is being incorporated into
the audit bulletin right now.
So we are implementing this for 2019, so with 2019,
this was kind of our main focus
in getting rid of the closing package.
Now, what does this mean to you?
Like I said, we had to make sure that,
is there any gaps that we were missing between
what was in the AFR and PARs and GTAS reporting,
and what was over in GFRS.
And here is the main, this was the key item
that was kind of the gap that was missing.
Because if you look, our audit model for our government,
it is supposed to be a bottom up approach.
Which means that all of the agencies out there
that you guys are getting these wonderful clean opinions,
and I'm supposed to use all of those individual
clean opinions, to be able to bring it all together.
And then if everybody has a clean opinion
then we have one big clean opinion
at the government-wide level.
And so to be able to do that, you have to show the linkage
between the data that's used
in the government-wide statements,
and the data used in each one
of your agency financial reports.
And so that's what this new Note 44 does, right?
So Note 44 is what's in OMB A-136.
So that's where it's called Note 44.
And you can look in there.
And what this does is on the left side,
it takes and it says, these are the agency's
AFR line amounts, right?
So you would have your exact name of your lines
and your AFR with the amounts over on the left.
And then all you're merely doing is showing
how that crosswalks
to the financial statement lines on either,
if you wanna call them the reclassified financial statements
or on the government-wide financial statements.
So, on the financial statements for our government,
if you have accounts receivable on the left side,
how does that crosswalk over to the right side?
Is it still accounts receivable or, where's it at?
And so that's what we need to show that linkage
to where you get from the left side over to the right.
And that shows how the data flows from the agency's
clean opinions to the government-wide statements.
Now, in looking at this, I called it new,
and it says new up here, and it is new to A-136.
But it's really not new.
I mean, it's a little slightly new format.
But all this did was it took the place
of what used to be part of the closing package process
that a lot of you probably referred to
as the reconciliation template.
So it was the old appendix two in TFM-4700.
The purpose was the exact same,
to reconcile the data that's in your agency AFR
to the data that is in the government-wide statements
or in the reclassified statements.
And so really, that process
should already have been in place,
it was already getting audit coverage
during your closing package audit.
And now what we've done is we've made it a new note
in your AFR and PAR, and got the audit coverage
from your agency financial statements instead of
having a separate audit called the closing package.
So this is an item that definitely was moved,
it definitely was needed to show that linkage
between the data in the agency's financial statements
and in the government-wide statements.
But it really wasn't needed to have
its own separate audit opinion and all that,
because we could just put it right into the agency's
AFRs and PARs there.
So we'll talk a little bit about this
as kind of a next phase here in just a few slides.
So keep this in mind,
like how we're having to do this crosswalking,
all this extra work here,
'cause that could be maybe a next project.
So, in addition to that one new note
that was placed into the AFR and PARs,
this lists a few other things, of changes
that had to be made to eliminate the closing package.
So if you look at the top, we expanded a few notes
in A-136 for the federal employee
and veteran benefits payable.
Actually, all the information was already in A-136 for this,
but where we tried to do some changes in A-136 is
try to make it easier to show, okay, how it is,
and agency's footnote for federal employee
and veteran benefits, and how it's gonna be
in the government-wide statement so that you could see
that close link, and that we could go
at the government-wide and pull that information
from your guys's footnote.
Tried to make it more clear to where we can
easily pull that information.
Then for fiduciary activities,
because it's a footnote, right?
And in the footnote
and describing that fiduciary activities,
we had a little bit more detail that we needed
at the government-wide level, so that was added in there.
Now, the next one gets a little confusing,
so I hope I explain this good.
Is disclosure needed no matter what the materiality is?
So what this means is
if you think back to that Note 44,
what happens when an agency has
something that is immaterial to the agency,
then you guys don't put it
as a separate financial statement line,
you would put it down into the other category?
Well, okay.
So then,
if I'm using your AFR to pull that information
and you have it in your other category,
how do I get that, right?
Because at the government-wide, I don't care
that accounts receivable was immaterial for agency A,
and it wasn't for agency B.
I can't just pull agency B's accounts receivable,
I have to know agency A's accounts receivable as well.
So I need to know how much in that other line
for agency A was accounts receivable.
So the good news is, I can get that from USSGLs, right?
So we looked at it and we said,
well, how are we gonna do this,
'cause I need to be able to pull all accounts receivable
and have accounts receivable number for the government-wide
no matter if it was material for agency A or agency B,
I need them all together.
I can't have half of my accounts receivable in other
and half of my accounts receivable in accounts receivable.
So with that, we looked at each note,
and we said, can we get that from the USSGLs?
And the answer was yes, except for these two notes.
And so those two notes are criminal restitution.
Well, okay, so that's not it, sorry.
So the note is, accounts receivable is the note,
but down in the disclosure of accounts receivable,
I need to know how much of your accounts receivable
is related to criminal restitution.
So what that means is you can leave
your accounts receivable in the other line.
But when you do your disclosure for your other line
in your narrative, or somewhere, in a table
or wherever you wanna put it, I need you to say,
out of accounts receivable,
blank amount is criminal restitution.
And the same thing for federal employee
and veteran benefits payable.
If you all put that into your other liabilities,
that's fine, if it's immaterial to you, that is fine,
put it in other liabilities.
But then what I need you to do
is in the disclosure for other liabilities,
I need you to break out the federal employee
and veteran better benefits how it shows you
to break it out in A-136.
Okay, so then variance analysis.
Variance analysis is something that
I know when I was at an agency level,
I mean, I knew I did a variance analysis, right?
And I know I supplied it to my auditors.
And I said, okay, here's my variances
on these financial statement lines,
we had thresholds to how much you had to explain,
and we worked to make sure
that we gave clear explanations and everything.
So one of the things we looked at is why,
knowing that you all do variance analysis already
at your agency level,
then why am I also asking you to do
a different type of variance analysis
at the government-wide level when you did GFRS?
So we looked at using your all's variance analysis
from your AFRs.
And being able to get the information that we need
at the government-wide level.
Because if you have a difference
in cash and other monetary assets
that requires you to have an explanation
on your variance analysis,
then I should be able to use that,
because I would also have a variance, possibly,
at the government-wide level.
And so we are going to this year really just try to use
those variance analysis that you are already submitting,
or already doing and submitting to OMB Max,
to then pull that information
and use it at the government-wide level.
Now this one, I'm not 100% sure
that you won't get future or potential calls
when we're going through the process this first year,
to say, okay, well, we saw your variance analysis,
but we need a little bit more detail.
We're gonna have to see how this one goes for this year end,
but that's our goal, is to use that
and not have to reach back out to you
for additional information.
But obviously, this will be the first year in doing that.
Now, one major change this year, and it was put in A-136,
but this is something that has been in the TFM in the past,
is that we did set a threshold.
When you're doing these variance analysis
that are submitted to OMB Max,
in the past, it was left up to management discretion
on when to explain a variance or not.
But since we're gonna be using it
at the government-wide level as well,
we did set a threshold, and it is in OMB A-136,
that we need explanations for differences greater than 10%
and over $1 billion.
And so make sure you pay attention to that and,
because it's both, it's 10% and over $1 billion.
Okay, so this is the fun part.
So that's 2019 what we just talked about.
So then, talking about additional ideas
to consider for future years.
So if you look at the future and you say,
okay, well, we're still at a disclaimer right now
at the government-wide level,
we're getting this reporting from the agencies.
How can we help the agencies,
how can we help get to a clean opinion?
I mean, looking at all of those things,
what is the most efficient and effective way
at doing the audit for our government?
And so these are just some ideas that are thrown out there.
I mean, these are ideas, they say ideas, additional ideas.
So there's no dates up here, there's no commitment
to 100% implementing any of these.
But I just wanna kind of talk about each one of them,
and then hopefully maybe it'll make you think
about some other ideas that you have
that you can share here in a couple more slides,
to see if you have any ideas that we could maybe add
to this slide for future conversations.
So the first one is streamline reporting and audit
for some of those what are
kind of referred to as non-significant entities.
So, saying that, what I mean is,
there's 159 reporting entities for the government, right?
And doing the last face up standard on reporting entity,
and following that we came up with 159 reporting entities,
that GAO, OMB, agencies, IGs, IPAs,
we all had to agree on.
So only 40 of those are deemed as significant entities
for the government, okay?
So those 40 significant entities
are your 24 CFO Act agencies,
plus the other additional entities that OMB and Treasury,
based on analysis, have determined as significant.
So if you take those 40 significant entities,
and I have some pretty charts and graphs that show this,
if you just take those 40 significant entities
and get clean opinions for those 40 significant entities,
that means your DoDs, your HUDs, your RRBs,
your General Fund, they have to get to a clean opinion,
but if you take those 40 clean opinions
and take the data of just those 40 significant entities,
you have coverage of over 99% of your assets,
liabilities, revenue, and expenses.
So it makes you think.
So for all those other entities,
there's 119 entities out there that we're requiring
to produce financial statements,
and to have full financial statement audits.
Is all of that really needed?
I'm not saying to eliminate it completely,
'cause yes, we need to have controls in place,
and we need to make sure that there's some
oversight going on, right?
Because we don't want people going rogue on us or anything.
But yet, do we really need them to do
a full set of financial statements,
and to also do a full financial statement audit?
Couldn't we do something a little less
and still maintain the control we need there?
So it's idea, right?
That's why I said, all these are just ideas.
Okay, so the next idea, streamline or consolidate
component level audits within an agency.
So this was actually not one of the ideas
that we had at Treasury, this was given by another agency.
But what they would like to do
is really look at their agency,
and say, okay, in that agency, whatever you call them,
bureaus, components, whatever you call
the lower detail of your agency,
do I need every single one of those smaller audits?
So now I know that some of those audits
are required by legislation, right?
But you can change legislation.
It's probably a lot of work, I know that.
But I can tell you some of these other ideas
that we have up here, it's gonna require a change
in legislation, and that's not stopping the idea.
I mean, it might lengthen the timeframe that you have
on being able to implement that,
but I mean, really truly looking at it and saying,
especially that legislation might have been written
a lot of years ago, where maybe extra control
over that bureau or that component was needed.
But is it still needed?
And so really looking at each one of those bureau
or component audits, or just special purpose audits
that are done out there and saying, are those truly needed,
and are we spending the government's money in the right way?
So that's definitely one area to look at.
So, consolidate agency audits with clean opinions.
So, if you think back to the audit model
that I talked about earlier, a bottom up approach,
the concept being if you take all of the clean opinions
and exclude all those agencies that I said
don't have clean opinions earlier,
and I tried to put together a financial report
of the United States government with just
all the clean opinions out there,
do you think I would get a clean opinion?
So, I mean, is it something that we should try?
Because I know a lot of people like to say,
oh, well, Jaime, why are you working so hard
on getting the government-wide statement's clean opinion,
'cause how long's DoD gonna be?
So we have all that time, don't we?
So just so you know, I hate when people tell me that.
But because my goal is, yeah,
I know DoD has work to do, and they're doing it.
So we need to get all of our stuff straightened up
so that we're there with them, and as they're ready
and we're ready, now we can get a clean opinion together.
So a lot of you said no, that that wouldn't work,
so that's really interesting, because I hear that
all the time, that, well, maybe that's our big problem,
is let's just take DoD out of the government,
out of the financial report on the United States government,
and I bet we can get a clean opinion.
Well, one problem would be that,
I'm pretty sure DoD probably does business with most of you,
so I'm not sure how intergovernmental eliminations
would work, but anyways.
But that's an idea, right, could we do that?
And then, as, let's say, the General Fund
gets a clean opinion here in a couple years,
so then let's move them in.
I don't know HUD, I don't know what HUD's timeframe is
in getting a clean opinion, so let's move them in.
And then when DoD gets their clean opinion,
let's move them in.
But it's an idea definitely to look at,
to see, could we benefit from it,
because could we then maybe see some true problems
that we still have instead of focusing on,
oh no, DoD doesn't have a clean opinion.
Because it would really give us a picture of
where we're gonna be when DoD gets a clean opinion,
because we don't wanna have problems
that we don't know about today.
Okay, so then the last one here that's a current idea
right now, but we're looking for more, remember,
is further leverage GTAS data.
Now, I will tell you that a similar presentation like this
was done at the AGA conference here in July last month.
And they did a little clicker question thing.
And this was actually the one that most folks at AGA liked,
it was voted number one.
To further utilize that GTAS data that we have.
I already talked about how we've done that starting in 2016
to populate the financial statement lines.
Now we're doing that to populate
as much as the notes data that we can.
So what else can we do with it, right?
So the thing that's listed here is just one idea,
but there's probably a lot more of ideas that we could do
with the GTAS data we have.
But one idea is,
could we produce agency financial statements?
So, if you remember the flowchart that we went over,
the importance of that is that
the AFRs have to match the GTAS data.
So if the AFRs match the GTAS data,
then why couldn't I produce a balance sheet for agriculture
or a balance sheet for energy?
I mean, I think I have the data.
So could we not do that?
Because I can tell you, we're doing that
when we have to do our reconciliation to show that we match
the agency's AFRs.
So in just that concept there, I mean, think about,
I don't know, I assume most of you have some type
of reporting tool that you purchased for your agency
to produce your financial statements.
So if GTAS were producing all the balance sheets
for you all, then maybe we could reduce the government cost
by not having to buy a tool for every agency out there
to produce a balance sheet, GTAS could produce that for you.
So I know that it's not as easy as that,
but I'd like to think it is.
'Cause there's some issues, right?
And we know what some of those issues are.
I know I've heard from some agencies that,
well, that'd be great if you could do
a balance sheet for the Department of Treasury.
But I want a balance sheet for IRS as well.
So that's where the first sub bullet comes in there,
need of bureau or component code.
So I know we started talking about this
at CRT meetings over the past year,
and we'll probably still continue to talk about it,
to see how we are going to implement
something like a bureau code or some type of code
to identify those components in the GTAS world there.
And then standardization of financial statement lines.
So this is my next big thing that I think
is really exciting that we could do.
If you think back to Note 44,
the new note that you guys are gonna have in your AFRs.
So why do we need that?
We need it because agencies have
this set of financial statement lines,
and the government-wide has this set
of financial statement lines.
So why are we doing that to ourselves?
Are we just making it harder on ourselves
by having two separate financial statement lines
for the agencies and for the government-wide?
So, this fixture here I think shows kind of maybe
an easy win, 'cause I'm not saying
they're all gonna be easy, but if you look at this,
on the left, it has the A-136 or AFR, PARs,
so the agency financial statement lines, right?
And you'll see that line nine is accounts receivable.
Line 10 is taxes receivable.
But then what happens when you get to the government-wide
or the reclassified financial statements?
We combine those two and call it
accounts and taxes receivable.
Does anybody know why?
Because I don't.
But why would we do that?
So that's just, back to that Note 44,
that's just something for you guys
to have to crosswalk, right?
You guys have to show that your accounts receivable
and your taxes receivable go to
accounts and taxes receivable.
So why don't we eliminate some of those easy things
that we could just make a one to one relationship
instead of that many to one or one to many, however it goes,
so that at the end of the day,
if we really tried to do this,
maybe we wouldn't even need that Note 44
if we were successful at doing this for everything.
Now at first I always thought that,
I thought, okay, well, agencies aren't gonna do this,
because really, it's going to be,
agencies have very specific items,
there's special things about each agency
that they're gonna want to do.
But when we were going through last year
and eliminating the closing package,
I actually heard from a lot of agencies that
they actually wanted to do this,
and I didn't think I would have that much support,
but once I heard the interest from other agencies
in trying to make this to be more of a one to one
instead of having to have a crosswalk like this,
I definitely want to look into this more.
So, that on the balance sheet, probably gonna be
pretty easy to fix something like that, right?
But in continuing to try to standardize
the financial statement lines, there's gonna be
some harder things that I know that are out there,
so I wanted to make sure to share those too.
So I mean you have your statement net cost.
I mean, your statement net cost at an agency level
doesn't look anything like a statement net cost
at the government-wide, right?
It's by program at the agency,
it's actually just by the federal entity
on the reclassified statements.
Then I mean, we have the statement of changes
in that position at the agency,
we have the statement of operations and changes
in that position at the government-wide.
Then there's the whole question of what do we do
with your guys's statement of custodial activity, right?
It rolls into either net position
or net cost at the government-wide,
but what do we do there in having some type of crosswalk,
or what do we do?
So we are setting up a working group
at the CRT meetings that we have every month.
We have asked for folks to notify us
if they'd like to be on the working group.
But I wanted to definitely talk about it here as well,
and have the name up there of Mallorie Davis
there's somewhere in the audience.
Oh, she's a scanner, I think,
so you can say hi to her as you walk out.
But anyway, so Mallorie Davis,
if you're interested in participating in the working group
about trying to standardize the financial statement lines,
there's definitely her information.
Okay, so I think we have a few minutes.
And I didn't leave as much time as I would like to,
so I apologize for that, but a few minutes
for any questions, or for those other ideas
that you all have out there in trying
to improve financial reporting and the audit model.
Hi, can you maybe come up to the mic
so everybody can hear your question?
Audience Member: Do you think you'll use our GTAS data
to do populate of DATA Act?
-: Okay, good question.
Okay, so I do know that they are looking into that more now,
and I don't have the details, and I don't know if I have
a DATA Act expert in the room or not, looking around.
I do know for one of the files,
that they have already made that ability to where
you can go out there and kind of generate that
based on the GTAS data, because we do submit GTAS data
over to DATA Act for them to use for edits and everything.
So I do know that they're looking into that more,
but I don't know what their current plans are.
but if you wanna give me your information,
I can definitely make sure I get somebody back with you.
Any more questions or ideas?
-: I have a wise idea.
Why can't we eliminate BETCs
and use only SGL accounts to identify certain things?
And this may take a while,
may be very confusing to most people,
but it's doable, I guess.
-: Yeah, and I know in the presentation
on Wednesday afternoon at three,
you probably will see that for some of the new BETCs
that we are generating for loans activity,
that it does have a correlating USSGL at this point.
With the BETCs, the BETCs are definitely from more of a
cash standpoint in having the data in cash,
and then that generating, like with the General Fund's
General Ledger information,
we have looked at, could we use it
from the trial balance, from the USSGLs.
And the data does match, but it isn't a transaction
that is generating a general ledger,
'cause it's coming from your trial balance instead.
So we have looked at it.
We weren't successful in doing it that way.
But I can continue to have a follow up conversation
with you on it if you would like.
But we did already look at it once.
So, any other questions?
Okay, well I didn't get any other ideas,
and I'm sure there's wonderful ideas out there,
so I do anticipate you guys emailing me
with any future ideas on improvements
you would like to see as well.
So, thank you all.
(audience applauding)