FM Transformation Program Management—Ms BJ White-Olson

Air Force Comptroller, July, 2004

Those of you who were fortunate enough to attend the recent ASMC Professional Development Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, were treated to some additional insight into the Transformation efforts of DoD and the Services. Many of the workshops had a Transformation theme and several directly addressed the new financial processes and systems we are all going to see over the next few years. These workshops covered topics as diverse as the new acquisition process and new systems like the Defense Enterprise Accounting Management System (DEAMS). I would like to summarize one of the workshops that the Air Force sponsored.

For this workshop, I had the privilege of moderating a panel discussion on the "Role of the Comptroller in Decision Support." An audience of over 350 people heard four prominent members of the Air Force and industry financial management team discuss the state of Comptrollership today and in the future. Mr James Short (SAF/FMP) brought the Air Staff perspective to the discussion, as well as that of Financial Operations and career development. Ms Pat Zarodkiewicz (Deputy Director of Financial Management at AFMC) spoke from the point of view of Budget and the Acquisition community. Colonel Dave Weinberg (AETC/FM) addressed the issues as both a MAJCOM and deployed Comptroller. Our final panelist, Mr Bob Bleimeister (a partner with IBM Business Consulting Services) addressed issues from the corporate view and that of a Chief Financial Officer.

Our panelists opened the discussion by addressing the decision support role played by Comptrollers today. Mr Short pointed out that the role of the FM today is not trivial; FM provides important support to the warfighter and serves as a steward of taxpayer dollars. Two of the key roles in this area are strategic planning (required by the CFO Act) and information management (timeliness and accuracy are critical). Col Weinberg added that the concept of internal controls and decision support are not new to our community--but as with internal controls, you cannot provide strong decision support without making it a priority. Mr Short said we must be at the forefront of the enterprise in the policy process. He said we must improve our networking--we cannot solve the issues by ourselves; we must work with others, especially in the systems arena. Ms Zarodkiewicz added that to earn the seat at the table, we must find a way to say "yes", i.e., we must be in the solutions business. We must find safe, legal, creative ways to support the warfighter. And to do that, we must form partnerships with the decision makers and help balance the risk operationally and fiscally. Adding another important aspect to this discussion, Col Weinberg said you not only have to be at the table, but you have to be able to find the table. Decisions are often made in informal settings and we must be aggressive in finding those avenues to the decision makers. To quote Col Weinberg: "We must be warriors about decision support." Finally, Mr Bleimeister noted that while the DoD may be 5-10 years behind industry in the decision support role (especially in terms of systems and data availability), that provides an opportunity to learn from their successes and failures and the Services may be able to not only catch up, but leap ahead.

That thought led directly to our next topic of discussion, our panel members' vision of the Comptroller ten years in the future. Col Weinberg suggested that FM might look like a mosaic of Financial Management, Personnel, Plans and Programs, and perhaps other support functions. He spoke of the likelihood of more back office analysis with a smaller, more specialized workforce, with perhaps higher grades. Some things he did not expect to change included the need for FM to continue running the financial process and the need to maintain close relationships with decision makers and other supporting functions. Col Weinberg made special mention of the need for more training of our people, especially the need to reinvest in Cost Analysis at the base level if we are going to see this vision take shape. Mr Short added that what we look like will depend heavily on how we shape our own future--we must plan now, rather than react to what happens.

Another view of the future is that financial data will be more readily available to commanders and decision makers, which will inevitably alter their relationship with the Comptroller. Ms Zarodkiewicz agreed that this was true, but said that pop-up displays are just data and are not always actionable. Financial Managers must still take this information and figure out what the commander needs to make a decision--without FM's involvement, the sheer volume of data may overwhelm them. On the other hand, she said, increased access to financial data by commanders will force us to be adaptive to their needs. We must translate it into operational terms (bombs on target, mean time between failure, cost per unit of output, etc.) that are understood quickly and accurately. Mr Bleimeister had a slightly different take on this idea. He said that in business, decision makers don't need FM to tell them financial information. There is, however, a huge gap in the integration of financial data with other business data. And that is the hard part. Financial managers must provide faster decision analysis that relates the financials to capital investment, product sourcing, sales and other crucial business information.