FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT MILESTONE
AUDIT FUNDAMENTALS
Mary Sally Matiella (center), Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller, emphasized that GFEBS’ ability to support all financial transactions is fundamental to supporting an audit. Here, Matiella walks alongside a Special Operations Forces team through the streets of Gizab in Daykundi Provice, Afghanistan, in July 2011. (Photo by SSG Fritz Butac.)
General Fund in compliance with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 and other statutory requirements.
AUDIT READINESS As Mary Sally Matiella, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller (ASAFM&C), noted,
“We know what an audit-ready financial environment looks like, and our audit readiness plan incorporates the necessary steps to get us there. … Fundamental to supporting an audit is being able to support every financial transaction all the way down to the details and support- ing documentation.”
GFEBS records financial transactions with supporting documentation, tracks transactions in detail, and will produce an auditable trial balance. The Army Audit Agency’s most recent evaluation found that GFEBS complies with 1,054 of 1,113
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requirements, or 94.7 percent, arising from the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996. Ongoing devel- opment of GFEBS will complete the remaining 5 percent of the requirements, for full compliance in FY12.
GFEBS capitalizes on the financial accounting structure to provide the first Armywide cost accounting system. This allows for allocating or assigning costs, producing full cost data, relating costs to outcomes and performance, cost plan- ning, and cost controlling. In addition, GFEBS provides visibility of transac- tions in real time as well as historical data, which enables analyses both to leverage available resources and to better inform program and budget decisions.
Kristyn Jones, Director of Financial Information Management within the Office of the ASAFM&C, described
the transformational nature of GFEBS:
“What we are talking about is a cultural change that involves moving away from success being measured by obligating 99.9 percent of funds. Instead, the focus must be on effective stewardship and making decisions that use resources wisely.” Army success, Jones said, “…requires good data and good analytic skills on the part of our personnel—and again, not just the resource management staffs. Effective cost management is a leader’s responsibility.”
INCREMENTAL APPROACH To develop a new system with the scope of GFEBS and to implement the solution worldwide with hundreds of organiza- tions and thousands of users required an incremental approach to both devel- opment and deployment. Development focused on a series of releases, while deployment involved a series of “waves.” GFEBS began implementation with a
Army AL&T Magazine
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