All Roads Lead to Real Property

How are government CFOs and real property professionals seeing their jobs intersect? Can you name at least two budget milestones that depend on that answer?

Fiscal responsibility in government has increasingly become focused on understanding fixed assets such as real property. From the President's Management Agenda to Enterprise Architecture, facilities and real property are being scrutinized like never before.

That's why we've created "Managing Change - A VISTA Publication". In each issue, we provide practical information to help cut costs, eliminate waste and improve workplace efficiency.

For example, by March 31, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required federal agencies to summarize test plans to demonstrate internal controls for financial reporting. This milestone is part of compliance with OMB Circular A-123 (OMB A-123), which tasks federal managers with improving the accountability and effectiveness of Federal programs and operations through enhanced, documented management controls.

Unfortunately, many federal agencies don't yet have a policy for gauging the financial impact of their real property holdings. That makes it nearly impossible to safeguard the organizations' finances from waste, fraud or mismanagement.

For more information on regulations and legislation affecting financial performance and real property, read Ray Summerell's article "The Era of Full Accountability" in the Value of VISTA section of this issue.

Want more? Then consider this: In its latest milestone, on February 28, 2006, the White House required agencies to submit a self-assessment and submission of enterprise architecture (EA) transition strategy to the OMB for the annual EA assessment cycle. Among the business architecture considerations in this assessment is how facilities factor into this transition strategy.

Tom Homan provides an excellent overview of the building blocks of EA strategy in the article, "Enterprise Architecture: Are You Missing a Key Component?" in the What You Should Know section of our newsletter.

EA is part of the President's Management Agenda (PMA), as is real property asset management. Incorporated into the PMA after having been introduced as Executive Order 13327 (EO 13327), this initiative has just celebrated its second anniversary. Surprisingly, many agencies have still not gotten past "yellow" on their Current Status in complying with this important PMA item.

VISTA has been invited by the GSA to share its experience in preparing Asset Management Plans (AMPs) that comply with EO 13327. The full article will be published in the debut issue of GSA's Real Property Policysite newsletter in June.

You can get a digested version of the article in this issue of "Managing Change - A VISTA Publication." Look for "Progress and Perspective on Executive Order 13327" in the other Executive to Executive article in this issue.

From financial reporting to enterprise-level technology to asset management, the one common thread that binds all of these federal fiscal responsibility requirements is real property. If you don't understand how your real property affects your mission success, you're well behind the learning curve.

We hope the articles in this and every issue of "Managing Change - A VISTA Publication" will help you become leaders in complying with real property regulations and legislation. When it comes to federal financial performance, all roads lead to real property.

Regards,


David Baxa
President and CEO, VISTA