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Dave Lebryk, Deputy Commissioner, Financial Management Service

I became the Deputy Commissioner of the Financial Management Service on January 4th of this year. To say the last 6 months have been very busy would be an understatement. This agency has a great deal going on and it’s been truly amazing to see first hand, not only the varied work of this Treasury Bureau, but the commitment of its employees to their customers and mission accomplishment.

I’ve spent the majority of my professional career within the Department of the Treasury. Most recently, I served for five years as the Deputy Director of the United States Mint, where I was responsible for running the daily operations of the world’s largest manufacturer of coins, medals, and coin products. I am one of the few people who can honestly say that I’ve made a lot of money – I just didn’t get to keep any of it.

Before my time at the U.S. Mint, I worked within the Departmental Office of the U.S. Treasury and there developed an appreciation of the importance of FMS’s work in the payments, collections, debt management, and financial reporting areas. The criticality of these functions to the ongoing operations of the government has not changed. But I have been struck by how much progress has been made in each of these areas. For example, in the late 1990’s, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fiscal Operations and Policy at Treasury, I watched the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 pass through Congress and even worked on its implementation at FMS. Last month, while preparing to speak at FMS’s Debt Management Services annual conference, I had a chance to reflect on where we were and where we are now. A great deal has been accomplished. Since the inception of DCIA, over $36 billion in delinquent debt has been collected through FMS’s Debt Collection systems and components with the help of our customer agencies. Almost half of that, or nearly $18 billion was to fulfill delinquent child support obligations. What an incredible difference. What an incredible success. This year we are on track to exceed all previous records for collections. A great example of what government can do, working together.

FMS’s other business lines (payments, collections, and governmentwide accounting and reporting) have equally impressive projects on-going. Here also much of our success can be attributed to the great partnerships we have with other agencies and the ways we work together. Governmentwide accounting has made huge improvements with reducing the period of time that it takes to release the annual Financial Report of the U.S. When the GWA Modernization Project is fully implemented, transactions received by FMS during business hours will be available the next business day on the appropriate Account Statement (similar to a bank statement). This will be a significant improvement for our agency customers.

It is also somewhat ironic that one of the first projects I’ve worked on since joining FMS was also one of the last ones I worked on just before departing for the United States Mint – tax relief stimulus payments. The main difference between the two efforts is our ability to issue many of this year’s payments via electronic funds transfer (EFT) versus only by paper check in 2002. This has resulted in us making payments more quickly and at a lower cost to the taxpayer. In fact, our ability to issue so many payments electronically will save taxpayers over $22 million. Our Regional Financial Centers are just exceptional at getting payments out on time and at an accuracy rate close to perfect. We’ve increased production shifts to accommodate the additional 130 million projected payments but the RFCs have approached it as just “business as usual”. It’s another example of the organization getting the job done without a lot of fanfare.

Finally, FMS is engaged in a major effort to modernize how we handle government collections (which totals over $3 trillion a year). The Collections and Cash Management Modernization effort will make FMS more efficient and effective in three major areas: collecting the government’s revenue, assisting Treasury in cash forecasting, and investing excess operating balances. This is an area I have a particular interest in and I am excited about our efforts.

I look forward to meeting representatives from our customer agencies. As you’ll read in this edition of the Financial Connection, our annual Financial Management conference is coming up and this is a great opportunity for everyone to do just that. Over the years, this conference has been exciting with presentations featuring new issues, projects and also areas of common interest. Plus, it’s a great opportunity for everyone to network and discover the commonality between functions of federal agencies. I hope many of you will plan to attend also.

The Financial Management Service will continue to strive to maintain high quality daily operations, to practice effective cost management, to be a great place to work, and to perform our duties as good stewards on behalf of the United States taxpayers. These are principles that Commissioner Tillman and her predecessors, Ken Papaj and Dick Gregg, have laid out for the Agency. You will find me equally committed to them as well.

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