The President has emphasized the importance of creating a government that is more competent, more efficient, and better able to serve the American people’s needs and to act as careful stewards of their tax dollars. As a result, the CFO Council has been instrumental in carrying out the Administration’s Campaign to Cut Waste effort by serving as the central clearinghouse for generating ideas and finding better ways to reduce fraud, waste and abuse. In addition, the CFO Council has been at the forefront of identifying and implementing common sense, pragmatic steps to cut costs where possible and eliminate practices that are antiquated or unnecessary.
When the President signed Executive Order 13576 – Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government, it made the CFO’s responsible for achieving cost savings by targeting wasteful practices and by reducing, and identifying alternatives to, discretionary travel, the use of consultants, and other administrative expenses. Building on that effort, the CFO’s at each of the agencies are implementing Executive Order 13589 – Promoting Efficient Spending, which requires agencies to reduce spending by 20 percent across a number of administrative categories by FY 2013 such as travel, information technology devises, printing and executive fleet. Agencies have already begun to achieve savings through a variety of approaches, such as: disconnecting wireless devices that are not longer being used; eliminating and seeking more cost-effective alternatives to conferences; and eliminating printing and mailing of forms that can be transmitted electronically. As a result of these efforts, agencies are on track to reduce spending in these areas by nearly $8 billion by the end 2013.
Agency CFO’s are also carrying out OMB Memorandum 12-12, which calls on agencies to achieve savings by implementing many of the creative and innovative practices agencies have used to reduce costs and improve efficiencies in the areas of travel, conference expenditures, real estate and fleet.
Agencies have also been focused on a number of additional initiatives that are aimed at creating a more efficient government and improving Federal financial management, such as:
- Avoid $50 billion in improper payments from FY 2010 through FY 2012
- Recapture $2 billion in overpayments to contractors from FY 2010 through FY 2012
- Implement the “Do Not Pay” solution to reduce payment errors
- Achieve $3 billion in Real Property savings by end of FY 2012