Federal Manager's Daily Report Wednesday, September 1, 2004 Published by FEDweek, the federal government's largest information resource with now over one million weekly readers to its electronic newsletters.
*********************************************************** Federal Manager's Daily Report is a brand new FREE daily electronic report for all federal managers and supervisors featuring the day's top stories on management and workforce issues. Please pass this information on to your fellow colleagues. You can sign up for this free daily report at http://www.fedweek.com/subscribepopup.htm. *********************************************************** In Today's Issue: 1. Army Deploys New HR Tool 2. DHS Faces Significant Financial Management Challenges, Says GAO 3. OMB Issues Memo Agency AWTF Obligations *********************************************************** 1. Army Deploys New HR Tool The Army this month is deploying an automated delegated examining application, a further step toward streamlining, simplifying and speeding up the process of recruiting, examining and referring external job candidates, replacing the legacy manual system. The process, which will work with the the Resumix system: consolidates the separate external and internal recruitment procedures into one; eliminates the needs for hard copy resumes, SF 171 and OF 612, for hard copy referral lists, and for traditional "crediting plans" involving knowledge, skills and abilities; allows managers to "weight" Resumix skills used in the examination process, to use same Resumix Skill Search Plan developed for internal merit promotion and to receive and review the internal and external referral lists simultaneously. The Army next will deploy an upgrade of their Resume Builder and an automated interest and availability tool that will allow HR specialists to assess applicant's availability by automatically notifying and querying individuals who have previously applied to open, inventory type announcements. An on-line "screen-cam" will be developed and made available to the public on using the new Army Resume Builder. 2. DHS Faces Significant Financial Management Challenges, Says GAO The Department of Homeland Security inherited the financial management weaknesses of the 22 agency systems that went into it, including 30 internal control problems identified in prior audits, 18 of them so severe as to be considered material, including insufficient internal controls, system security deficiencies, and incomplete policies and procedures necessary to complete basic financial information, the Government Accountability Office has said. "Of the four inherited component agencies that had previously been subject to stand-alone audits, all four agencies' systems were found not to be in substantial compliance with the requirements of the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act, an indicator of whether a federal entity can produce reliable data for management and reporting purposes," said GAO. It said the component agencies took action to resolve nine of the 30 inherited weaknesses and that 21 were combined and reported as material weaknesses or reportable conditions in DHS's initial performance and accountability report, or were reclassified by independent auditors as lower-level observations and recommendations, a practice that does little to resolve the root causes. DHS is now acquiring a financial enterprise solution to consolidate and integrate business functions and expects it to be fully operational in 2006 and cost $146 million, according to GAO-04-774. However, it cautioned that other agencies have failed in attempting less than that and noted that success depends on having an effective strategic management framework, sustained management oversight, and user acceptance of the efforts. It's too early to tell whether its financial enterprise solution will meet relevant financial management improvement laws and as of June 2004 DHS was not subject to the CFO or FFMIA, said GAO. It noted that DHS's own auditors had disclosed systems deficiencies that would have likely resulted in noncompliance issues. 3. OMB Issues Memo Agency AWTF Obligations The Office of Management and Budget has issued a memo instructing agencies holding certain kinds of contracts to deposit fees into the acquisition workforce training fund, designed to augment agency training and education funds for the development of the acquisition workforce "Executive agencies are required to deposit fees generated by government-wide contracts to the AWTF account. The fund will be credited with five percent of the fees collected by non-DoD executive agencies under the following contracts: government-wide task and delivery-order contracts entered into under sections 303H and 303I of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949; government-wide contracts for the acquisition of information technology as defined in section 11101 of title 40, U.S.C., and multi-agency acquisition contracts for such technology authorized by section 11314; and, multiple-award schedule contracts entered into by the Administrator of General Services," said the memo. It said the AWTF was established under the Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003, Title XIV, Section 1412 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2004 -P.L. 108-136. The General Services Administration will manage the fund through the Federal Acquisition Institute to ensure the civilian workforce is sufficiently trained to acquire property and services, according to OMB. GSA will send payment instructions for crediting the fund to all civilian agency heads. For information about these instructions contact Bill Wilson at GSA on (202) 208-6925, or Lesley Field at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at (202) 395-4761. Published by FEDweek LLC 11551 Nuckols Rd. Suite L Glen Allen, VA 23059 (804) 288-5321 Website: http://www.fedweek.com A 100% Veteran-Owned Business [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are subscribed to federalmanagersdailyreport as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/BCfwlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! 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