NEWSLETTERS

Message from the CEO

Over the past year, some agencies within the Department of Defense (DoD) have instituted Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). The results have been staggering, with over $500M in potential improper payments thwarted. The best part is that the mistakes were discovered BEFORE the checks were cut. It’s much easier to recover dollars that never left your account.

The DoD’s BAM program is driven by Oversight Systems’ technology. We make it possible for them to efficiently inspect 100% of their transactions.

How we do it, and how your agency can benefit from continuous controls monitoring for transactions (CCM-T) will be the topic of upcoming newsletters. Tune in.

– Patrick Taylor, CEO
– Oversight Systems

Federal Oversight Insider: Tom Temin

Fiscal 2010 discretionary budgets, rising an average of four percent, added to the still-unspent bulk of the stimulus money appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), all mean an active year for federal program managers and the financial staffs supporting them.

The Obama administration has made much of its desire for greater transparency in how money is spent, with agencies under pressure to report how and where their dollars are committed. Transparency mechanisms are engineered data feeds, and once agency financial systems are linked to them, the data for public consumption is automatically out there.

But transparency is not the same as accountability. The administration has pressured agencies to spend their stimulus money speedily— a red flag for managers concerned with eventual audits. Accountability means agency money is spent in a way that complies with federal financial standards, ensures clean audits, and avoids mistakes such as wrongful–activity, fraudulent–invoice or double payments.

Moreover, Vice President Joe Biden has said he thinks the accountability, and transparency, standards engendered by the ARRA should become standard operating procedure for all government financial activity.

Speed, programmatic fidelity and accountability— it’s a tall order. No agency’s financial staff can achieve all three by waiting until year-end, or even monthly, statements come out. It requires real–time insight into what is going on financially. Besides procedural and system integrity, it requires automated tools that monitor transactions continuously to spot potential errors before they occur and an improper or fraudulent check is issued.

– Tom Temin
– Thomas R. Temin Associates

ARRA Oversight and Monitoring

The OMB compliance requirements for managing ARRA funds necessitate an evermore systematic, automated and sophisticated capability for accounting, monitoring and reporting funding performance. The mechanisms necessary to monitor and mitigate the unique implementation risks prescribed by ARRA are specifically addressed within Oversight Systems continuous monitoring software.

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