With the Stimulus Bill passed and signed the Treasury will be flooding Federal, State and local agencies with cash flow. (I wish I had that problem). With that disbursement process the decisions about the spending and allocation of the Stimulus money will now be passed to the hands of the heads of those agencies making it quite difficult even impossible in cases to oversee the funds use.
The bill includes a provision to track the Stimulus funds using a newly created database and website at www.recovery.gov where you should be able to find information about projects and contract awards. Also included in the bill was an oversight panel to be formed for the entire project review and accountability. The panel was to be headed by the newly created Chief Performance Office, however as you may recall the nominee for that position Nancy Killefer, withdrew on the basis of 'tax troubles.' Without this key figure in place at this time will be yet another challenge for accountability of the Stimulus money. You can liken it to a ship sailing around the waters with a crew and no captain.
As a project manager I can tell you the hardest part of managing a project, once the plan has been established is determining the percent of completion of the work and expenses to account for the work completed. There are numerous calculation factors we used to accurately portray what we refer to as Earned Value. A project portfolio of the size and scope of the Stimulus plan will need to be heavily managed from day 1 to ensure compliance and control and here we are on day 2 with no one steering the ship.
While the Inspector General's Office and Government Accountability Office have been allotted significant funds source to staff up; anyone who has undertaken a portal project to manage this volume of data knows the task of accumulating and accurately reporting that data is a huge effort. With some agencies seeing their budgets double in size, it adds an even more difficult layer of complexity, especially when the same agencies have had significant trouble accounting for their budgetary spending in the past.
Here are my questions… Do you expect an accurate accounting of the Stimulus Funds and approved Projects using the funds? Will you be watching www.recovery.gov to see what the funds will be used for?
Code of Honor Applies
I guess the answer to that depends on your intestinal fortitude. After some of the mentions in the popular press regarding leaked details of the spending efforts by members of congress, I have gained a new appreciation for "ignorance is bliss". Not that I, or any sane individual, would want to live in that state of mind, yet it tears and tugs at the strings of a violent desire to keep an eye on reality. Let me teleport us to the planet IF for a moment. IF we could find the one individual in all of government that actually knows the true balance of the general revenue fund down to dollars and cents.....that man or woman should be President! We now return you to your regularly scheduled existence.
ReplyDeleteI hope you know you have many fans here, one of whom is my humble self. With only 4% of the stimulus spent, the economic has stablized somewhat so obviously the stimulus was just a sly way for B. Obama to get his used car saleman tactics into the state of play. Kind of like buying a used car for 10k with a 2k trade in, when you complain the price of the car is too much the slick sales dude says ok, we'll sell you that car for 9k and give you 1k for your trade in. Meantime Americans now have a huge pool of spendable money for Obama's shovel ready projects... the problem is what are they shoveling? and how much. Still one of those great big known unknowns if you know what I mean.
ReplyDeletePS I like the planet of IF...