Memorandum on the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program

Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies

In charting the goals of this Administration, I have emphasized the need to improve the decision-making processes of the Federal Government. We must make our system for delivering program services more effective.

Therefore, I am giving full support to the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program, an indispensable project with a charter to sharpen some of the tools of management.

Under the leadership of the Comptroller General, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Budget Director, and the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, the Joint Program has promoted many far-reaching improvements in the past. I want to see achievements in the future that will make management of Government operations more responsive and efficient.

To get full measure from the resources available to us, we must have all the necessary management information. We must have financial systems that illuminate every level and stage of decision-making: from the first-line supervisor to the President and the Congress, from the long-range forecast to the critical post-audit. Nothing less will let us go forward with programs that provide the most benefit for the taxpayer's dollar.

I have previously asked for a vigorous effort to convert to the accrual basis for stating budget revenues and expenditures. That high priority goal dovetails with the objective of developing effective financial system, including budgeting, accounting, reporting, and auditing.

I direct the head of each department and agency to join Comptroller General Elmer B. Staats, Secretary of the Treasury David M. Kennedy, Budget Director Robert P. Mayo, and Civil Service Chairman Robert E. Hampton, under the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program, to make the development of effective financial systems a high priority in strengthening administrative practices. Without this effort, our ability to cope with the needs of the 1970's will be seriously impaired.

The challenge is there. I call upon each Federal manager to accept it as a personal challenge. Demand better financial information and use it.

RICHARD NIXON