Agency Snapshot: Department of Education

The Department of Education promotes student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. The Department’s activities includes supporting student financial aid, and education research and providing relevant information to teachers, education policymakers, and parents. The Department’s $362 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2010 budgetary resources ensures its ability to effectively and efficiently award and monitor grants, provide essential technical assistance, and provide other services useful to states, school districts, and other grantees. Like other agencies, the Department is committed to pursuing this important mission while managing its finances effectively, which includes ensuring its payments are accurate, using only property it needs, and accounting for its finances properly.

CFO and CAO
Thomas Skelly
website: 
www.ED.gov

Key Initiatives

The Administration is eager to reduce annual improper payments and is working with Federal and State partners, Congress, and other stakeholders, to reduce the government-wide amount of errors without negatively impacting citizen access to needed programs. "Improper payments" occur when funds go to the wrong recipient, the recipient receives the incorrect amount of funds, documentation is not available to support a payment, or the recipient uses funds in an improper manner. The government must better ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and efficiently. You can learn more about our efforts to reduce improper payments at the newly launched PaymentAccuracy.gov.

The chart to the right depicts the agency’s progress towards its real property savings goal. More information about the nature of the savings can be found on this agency’s page in the Real Property section of Performance.gov.

Tabular View

Decision makers and the public must have confidence in the financial information provided by agencies in order to make good decisions about managing government programs and implementing policy. The results of the annual independent audit are one of the best ways to assess agencies’ financial information and recordkeeping systems. All agencies are working to improve their financial management in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used as efficiently as possible.

Tabular View