The Office of Financial Management (OFM) oversees
agency-wide budget formulation and execution, accounting,
payment processing, financial reporting, foreign
and domestic travel, employee relocation, payroll
liaison and financial systems. It monitors and tracks
the expenditure of an annual total budget of nearly
one billion dollars, including three separate appropriations
and four separate kinds of user fees. OFM
pays over 80,000 invoices per
year, and processes vendor payments of over $133
million, with over $62 million made via wire transfer.
More than 10,000 travel vouchers are processed annually.
OFM develops, operates and maintains FDA's central
financial systems, which are being continuously updated
and improved.
In 1996, OFM implemented a new open-budget execution
process to allocate agency resources efficiently,
increase management awareness of cost/benefit implications,
provide incentives to reduce costs, and allow for
increased financial flexibility to support unfunded
high priority initiatives. This new budget process
is designed to identify the program goals, objectives,
and performance measures that best support the agency's
mission, support the management of agency resources
in a collaborative and coordinated fashion, introduce
sound management principles to the lowest accountable
levels within the agency, and promote greater accountability
for resource management.
OFM helped the agency to withstand a
17 percent reduction in its operating budget in FY
1996 without having to execute a reduction-in-force.
Also, resources were redistributed to support a number
of key agency initiatives such as improving the review
of food additive petitions, developing strategic systems,
and helping to support the tobacco initiative. OFM
continues to refine the budget formulation and execution
process and determine how it can serve as a better
vehicle for strategic planning.