The Managers of Finance

Progress in financial management also brings burdens of rising expectations.

More than most in government today, Linda Morrison Combs offers an example of true perseverance toward the worthy goal of improving its financial accountability. She was one of the architects of the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act, which began a sustained effort to force agencies to better account for the huge amounts of money that move through their hands. Since then, Congress has passed other laws seeking better financial management and agency chief financial officers have borne the burden of meeting the rising expectations.

Combs served in senior posts in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. She became CFO of the Environmental Protection Agency and then of the Transportation Department in the present administration before assuming her current position as controller for the Office of Management and Budget, where she is charged with providing governmentwide leadership for better financial management.

In 2004, 18 of 24 departments and major agencies achieved clean audits and internal controls were greatly improved. Eight of the 24 have gotten to "green" in the scoring system of the President's Management Agenda. There is still a lot of work to be done. The huge Defense Department's financial management systems remain on the Government Accountability Office's list of the highest-risk problems in government, and Defense's efforts to modernize all its business process were placed on that list as well this year.

Our feature this month on CFOs wraps up our yearlong effort to assess the progress government has made to en-hance its capabilities in four key fields of management: finance, technology, human resources and acquisition. Under the leadership of Deputy Editor Anne Laurent, we have published cover stories about each of these disciplines and a special issue profiling the chiefs who manage these functions in the largest agencies of government. Together, these leaders are the backbone of management improvement programs today.

Hurricane Katrina's aftermath is still much in the news, and this month, we continue to examine what's probably the most important issue it raised: the complexities and barriers to action that our federalist system creates in such an emergency. In collaboration with the editors of Governing magazine, we assigned longtime intergovernmental writer Jonathan Walters to the task. Versions of Walters' piece are running in both magazines this month.

In "Schmooze or Lose," Kimberly Palmer writes this month about what's OK and what's not as companies seek advantage in the fast-growing world of federal contracting. And Jason Vest peels back the veil on the psychological conditioning programs the military uses as it seeks to shape attitudes in target countries.

Our magazine remains the core of our operation, but we continue to reach out to our community of senior government officials both on the Internet and through topical events. GovExec.com continues to innovate, most recently with a new section, "Life After Government," seeking to serve readers who are nearing retirement. We are wrapping up a series of 17 breakfasts and three lunches, most at the National Press Club, that offered our readers a chance to hear directly from experts on current issues. More's to come next year-when we look forward to seeing you in print, in person and online. Season's greetings to all!