OMB pushes up deadline for audits, performance reports

Agencies will have less time to prepare annual performance reports and financial audits under rules issued by the Office of Management and Budget last month. Audits and performance reports for fiscal 2001 are both due to Congress by Feb. 27, according to a recent OMB bulletin. For fiscal 2002, OMB wants both reports by Feb. 1, 2003. OMB has told agencies they should prepare to submit their reports at even earlier dates in the future. By comparison, fiscal 2000 audits were due to Congress in early March of this year, and most agencies turned in their performance reports later that month. Agencies must prepare and submit annual performance reports under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). The Bush administration wants agencies to accelerate their reporting so performance and audit information can be used in the budget debate and to influence management decisions, said OMB Director Mitch Daniels in the bulletin. Agencies with performance measures that track activities over the calendar year, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, will have even less time to compile their performance reports under the new reporting schedule. But agencies could add such information to reports later in the year, according to Carl DeMaio, director of government redesign at the Reason Public Policy Institute. "There is no good reason why you can't update information on the report throughout the year," he said. The Bush administration considered other financial management requirements that were dropped from the final version of the OMB bulletin. OMB had proposed requiring audits of all major agency components in a draft version of the guidance issued in May. The draft also put civilian agencies on notice that they should turn in "clean" or unqualified audit opinions by fiscal 2003, and that agencies should achieve a clean governmentwide audit by fiscal 2005. None of these requirements are present in the final guidance. "I think it's reflective of [OMB] trying to raise the bar but not raising the bar too high," DeMaio said of the difference between the draft and final guidance. The bulletin also requires agencies to submit semiannual interim financial statements in fiscal 2002 and quarterly statements in fiscal 2003. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has been a leading advocate of timely financial reporting within the Bush administration, according to DeMaio. "The person pushing this real hard is Paul O'Neill," he said. "There is no good reason why we can't get agencies to turn [audits] in earlier."