Federal Drive Interviews — April 11, 2013

Ray Bjorklund of Birch Grove Consulting, LLC, sheds some light on the 2014 budget numbers. Michael Wood, Recovery Board executive director, discusses that board...

This is the Federal Drive show blog. Here you can listen to the interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day and links to additional resources.

Today’s guests:

Ray Bjorklund
president
Birch Grove Consulting, LLC

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Few documents are as dense as the annual White House budget request. Yet agency managers and federal contractors know there’s gold in those numbers, and in all the hidden documents behind them. Ray Bjorklund spent a decade and a half as a numbers guru at the IT advisory firm Fed Sources, later acquired by Deltek. Bjorklund recently formed his own consultancy, Birch Grove.

Michael Wood
executive director
Recovery, Accountability and Transparency Board

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Inspectors general and financial managers have a new tool for tracking Superstorm Sandy relief money. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama authorized the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to track Sandy funding. It had previously only been tasked with following funding related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Now a new memo is filling in some details on how this will work. Michael Wood, executive director of the RAT Board, joins the Federal Drive as part of our weeklong mutlimedia series “Rise of the Money People: Financial management moves front and center as agencies make final assault on wasted billions.”

RELATED STORIES:

Recovery Board opens next frontier in financial accountability

Special Report: Rise of the Money People

Kay Daly
assistant inspector general for audit, management services
Department of Health and Human Services

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One department makes more than half of the improper payments reported across the government. That’s Health and Human Services. Last year, it handed out $65 billion that it shouldn’t have. Kay Daly heads up the audit services in the HHS office of the inspector general. It’s her task to review these wrong payments each year. Although it may not seem like it after a bruising audit, people like Daly are here to help department financial managers do their jobs better.

Danny Werfel
controller
Office of Management and Budget

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Danny Werfel is the controller of the Office of Management and Budget. He tells executive editor Jason Miller about why CFOs are no longer number crunchers but performance data maestros. It’s a part of our week-long series, the Rise of the Money People: Financial management moves front and center as agencies make final assault on wasted billions.

MORE FROM THE FEDERAL DRIVE

Thursday morning federal headlines – April 11, 2013
The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Emily Kopp discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air. In today’s news, Senior Executive Service tend to be more satisfied with their jobs than other feds and the General Services Administration says President Barack Obama’s budget plan will help maintain federal buildings, consolidate its portfolio and invest in other federal property like border crossings.

From Our Reporters

  • The Pentagon’s 2014 budget proposal would reduce the civilian workforce by 5 percent over the next five years, increase TRICARE premiums and request another round of base closures. It also comes in well above the spending caps that are already in place under current law. Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu covered the Pentagon’s budget rollout all day yesterday. He talked about it with Federal News Radio’s Francis Rose. The differences between what DoD proposed last year and what it’s asking for this year are few and far between.
  • The $2 billion increase in the federal IT budget request for fiscal 2014 is less about how much and more about how agencies would spend it. The administration is making the case the boost is both timely and deserved. Federal News Radio’s Executive Editor Jason Miller was at the budget press briefing yesterday with federal CIO Steven Van Roekel.

DoD Report

Cybersecurity Update

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