How Mature is your Finance Organization?

How Mature is your Finance Organization?

By Steve Watson, CPA, CGFM

IBM Public Sector Financial Management

In 2005, I published a whitepaper upon the 15th Anniversary of the CFO Act entitled Federal Financial Management, The End of the Beginning (http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/imc/pdf/wp-cfo-act.pdf). In that paper, I included a Financial Management Maturity Model reproduced in the table below. Borrowing from a Winston Churchill quote, I postulated that looking across government most agency Finance organizations had reached “the end of the beginning.”

Levels of Financial Management Maturity:

I thought it would be interesting to revisit the table and assess where government Finance organizations stand today. In my opinion, there has been clear progress in the past seven years, particularly around eliminating control weaknesses, quantifying and understanding erroneous payments, and elevating the status of Finance. I think progress has been slower with respect to providing analytical information that drives decision making and taking steps to drive down the cost of Finance through standardization and consolidation. I would love to hear your views on the maturity model and where your agency and more broadly government Finance stands today.