April 20, 2017
On Thursday, April 20, the National Academy of Public Administration and Grant Thornton hosted a Working Capital Fund Symposium on change, process improvements, and efficiencies of WCFs.
The quarterly WCF Symposium aims to develop discussions to adopt a more streamlined WCF approach. Through this collaborative effort, government executives and managers can discuss WCF issues, share lessons learned, and gather best practices. Agency leaders share their insights to implement and sustain Working Capital Funds.
Jim Taylor, Managing Director with Grant Thornton LLP's Global Public Sector, has more than 30 years of experience in government finance, systems implementation, and grants management. Before joining Grant Thornton, he served as the Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). Mr. Taylor provided an overview of Working Capital Fund accomplishments and discussed topics brought up in past symposiums.
Jennifer Ayers serves as the Director in the Office of the Secretary of Financial Management, Department of Commerce (DOC). She is responsible for continuous review, re-engineering, and streamlining of reimbursable services in the Working Capital, and Advance and Reimbursement accounts. She opened up a roundtable discussion about WCF changes, process improvements, and effectiveness focusing on the impact of changes in the fiscal administration in the first quarter of 2017. Chris Richey, Branch Chief of the WCF/IFF Division in the Office of Budget, Department of the Interior (DOI), discussed how cuts impact his agency’s decision making and how his Working Capital Fund is often being asked whether savings are available. He initiated a discussion of how WCFs can prove that they are saving their agencies money. The DOC found that focusing on which services are provided and prioritizing them was a valuable experience.
Chris Richey talked through the results of the Strategic Interest Group (SIG) survey regarding WCF governance and decision-making processes. The SIG aims to develop solution papers around issues that are key to the WCF group. It highlights 2-3 topics that will be researched in the 3 months between the WCF Symposia. The Governance SIG purposes to document common issues that WCFs face around governance and provide a summary of best practices identified by surveying a core group of WCFs. Therefore, a survey of five agencies and departments was conducted that included 42 questions. Responses to these questions were compiled, analyzed, and presented to the Governance SIG. The main research areas were Board composition, performance and reporting, customer communication, and fund management. Mr. Richey recommended increasing access to information in advance of meetings by providing briefing materials and other documentation to improve meeting preparedness. He furthermore suggested to consider establishing voting procedures such that only members who purchase the services impacted by the vote are eligible to vote on the issue in question to reduce uninformed voting. Aligning WCF performance measures with the agency's mission so that performance measures are relevant to the agency and inform the decision-making process could also be a valuable practice.
Leigh Sheldon of Grant Thornton provided an update of the OMB MAX Collaboration site for WCFs. This will be a platform to assist federal agencies in adopting a more modern WCF approach to help address critical issues and solve problems that are common to the group. Website permissions, structure, and content uploads will be managed by NAPA/Grant Thornton to standardize, consolidate, and optimize the site management process.
Finally, Jennifer Ayers provided an update on the readiness assessment overview, which
will evaluate whether a WCF is a right tool for a department or agency. A readiness assessment is oriented around a three-phased approach: data collection and analysis, report development and submission, and review and decision. Similarly, the existing operations of a WCF can be assessed. As a result, departments can start an as-is assessment, conduct a gap analysis, and receive recommendations on how to enhance operations. Ms. Ayers would like practitioners to be involved in designing the readiness assessment and invited attendees to participate.