Linda Combs | OMB banking on financial upgrades

When President Bush nominated Linda Combs to be the next Office of Management and Budget controller, the confirmation process was almost second nature to her.Combs, a former chief financial officer at the Transportation Department, had gone through the process four other times.She plans on tackling many of the same issues that occupied her predecessor, Linda Springer, who now is the director of the Office of Personnel Management. These include reducing the amount of improper payments agencies make, helping agencies improve their financial performance and close their books within 45 days after the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. She also will help rejuvenate the Grants Management Line of Business Consolidation initiative and develop standards for the Financial Management Line of Business effort.Before coming to OMB, Combs oversaw Transportation’s $57 billion budget and implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act.She also was CFO at the Environmental Protection Agency for two years and worked for the departments of Education, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.Combs holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Appalachian State University of Boone, N.C., and a doctorate in educational administration from Virginia Tech University.She’s married to David Combs, acting CIO at the Agriculture Department. GCN assistant managing editor for news Jason Miller interviewed her recently.COMBS: The administration’s overarching financial management priority is to ensure that each agency has accurate and timely financial data available on a daily basis to drive results in key performance areas. The short-term goal is to build the foundation for accurate and timely reporting. In the President’s Management Agenda initiative for improving financial performance, this foundation is captured in the yellow standards of success.Some specific short-term goals:COMBS: The administration’s long-term goals are to improve internal controls as well as to produce accurate and timely financial information that managers use for decision-making and performance improvement. For example, better controls and information will assist in reducing improper payments $25 billion by 2009, and by disposing of excess property that’s no longer needed or costly to maintain. Initial projections indicate that the size of the federal real property inventory can be decreased by 5 percent or $15 billion by 2009.COMBS: My staff is working closely with the OMB E-Government Office and the new CFO Council Grants Policy Committee chaired by the National Science Foundation.OMB has named Health and Human Services Department and NSF as the co-managing partners for the Grants Management Line of Business implementation, and our goal for the remainder of 2005 is to identify three consortia providers to begin solution planning and alignment for 2006.[Late last month], the partners issued a request for each agency to declare its intent to either lead a consortium or participate in a consortium as a member. Responses in the form of a declaration of intent [were] due Sept. 9.In addition, the task force developed a business case and submitted it to OMB in September 2004. OMB approved the business case in October 2004, which included a recommendation for consolidation of other governmentwide grants streamlining efforts. In response to this recommendation, I have worked with the CFO Council to establish the GPC to serve as a coordinating and advisory body for grant policies.COMBS: My staff is working closely with the OMB E-Government Office and has developed a due-diligence checklist to assist agencies in evaluating and selecting both public and private COEs. We will continue to work closely with agencies in developing their requests for proposals and service level agreements.We also are working with the CFO Council in establishing something similar to a configuration control board as well as creating a standard business processes committee to assist in standardizing and simplifying financial systems to make the convergence to a COE more transparent.A critical success factor is that all the stakeholders understand their roles and responsibilities. To do so, we are reaching out in the following ways: