The Future of Financial Management: Bureau of the Fiscal Service to Modernize by 2030
In an annual letter to agency chief financial officers, Commissioner Tim Gribben of The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service announced several financial management goals for 2021. The Bureau was responsible for dispersing stimulus payments to millions of Americans, which presented an opportunity to make improvements within the financial management system of the federal government.
To agency CFO’s, Commissioner Gribben wrote, “The past year has validated our vision for the future of financial management and confirmed the importance of embracing agile methodologies in the delivery of our products and services. The nation depends on all of us to provide economic relief to citizens, businesses, as well as state, local, and tribal governments.”
The Bureau listed several vision goals in terms of disbursing payments, collections, reporting, services, and financing. One goal of the Bureau is to disburse 99 percent of payments electronically to Americans, even using platforms like Venmo so payments reach people more quickly.
Furthermore, the Bureau identified six trends that CFO’s should consider over the next 10 years. Improving customer and employee experience, new entrants to the financial market and the rise of FinTech, real-time payments, predictive analytics. upskilling employees, and the workplace of the future.
Other goals marked by the Bureau include modernizing the electronic tax collection system by 2024 and increasing the digitization of paper collections. On the reporting front, the Bureau hopes to migrate 70 Fiscal Service datasets from legacy formats and locations to Treasury’s Fiscal Data by 2024 and streamline and improve the current financial reporting and audit processes for federal agencies by 2025.
Gribben explained that CFO’s also play a large role in helping agencies make evidence based policy decisions. He said, “CFOs have to be much more focused in the future on being able to link the performance results and the financial results for the money that Congress is giving us to invest in our programs and services.”
These goals listed by the Bureau in the letter to federal CFO’s goes hand in hand with the Chief Financial Officers Council plan to build a federal financial management (FM) workforce and the “CFO of the Future Now- The 2030 Plan,” as previously reported by FedManager. The Plan creates a roadmap for CFO’s as they move past the 30th anniversary of the CFO Act and think about the best ways to improve the federal financial management system.
