Summary: The lack of the right kind of information affects the way the Government functions. In financial management, a manager needs timely, complete, and accurate information on: legal limits and resources available, obligations and costs incurred and their relationship to budgeted amounts, work goals achieved and their cost, the degree to which work goals are met, and opportunities to achieve goals at a lower cost. This information must be tailored to the needs of managers at different levels in the organizational hierarchy. An accounting system should serve the informational needs of each management level in an agency by summarizing information so that each manager is not burdened with extraneous information. Marginal accounting systems are the result of poor system designs, failure to implement systems as designed, incomplete files, inadequate controls, or poor follow-up of errors and unreliable reports. Managers can take the following steps to foster effective accounting systems: make acounting and computer support staffs part of the management team; open up and maintain communications with accounting and computer staffs; encourage participation by the controller and his staff in decisionmaking; provide continuing education programs for managers, accountants, auditors, and computer professionals; use computer systems to produce the financial information and analysis needed in making decisions; and make sure accounting systems are properly designed. The various reforms in the executive and legislative branches over the past few decades have established a fairly strong institutional base for achieving program accountability. However, improvements in the reporting, analysis, and oversight processes now in place are needed rather than new processes and institutions. Managers of individual programs need a steady flow of information on the results of these programs. Legislation has been proposed which would require the head of each agency to report each year on the adequacy of the agency's systems of internal accounting control. Any inadequacies or material weaknesses in internal controls would have to be identified and the plans and schedule for remedying those inadequacies or material weaknesses described in detail. Decisionmaking would greatly improve if decisionmakers had accurate information to guide them.
