On the Hook for Bad Systems

House members introduced a Defense Department acquisition bill on Wednesday that would directly impact procurement workers -- and some aren't too happy about it. Some of the provisions in the IMPROVE Acquisition Act are particularly tough for financial managers. According to a Government Executive article:

The Defense comptroller would be required to "extend preferential treatment to any DoD component that has financial statements validated as ready for audit earlier than the current statutory deadline of Sept. 30, 2017, including: . . . the size of bonus pools available to the component's financial and business management workforce, the rates of promotion for such workforce, awards for excellence for such workforce and the scope of work assigned to such workforce."

In the event that an organization's financial statements are not ready for audit by 2017, the bill would require the Defense secretary to take "corrective measures," including delaying the release of appropriated funds and consequences for key personnel.

The poor state of Defense's financial management systems has acquisition employees understandably concerned that they'll be on the hook for botched statements. Here's what one DoD financial manager said:

Oh great, now we financial folks on the front lines will be held accountable for financial and accounting systems that are extremely old, that don't talk to one another correctly if at all, and are completely out of our control to improve or replace. How is that going to help improve the audit scores of our financial statements?

Brittany Ballendstedt is on vacation.