Thomas H. Stanton

While historically, the federal government has tended to focus risk management in the financial arena, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has recently launched a major reassessment of the government’s approach—encouraging the use of Enterprise Risk Management.

As the administration and Congress take actions to address the immediate financial crisis, determining how to place the government's response on a stronger organizational footing is a key step to reducing the likelihood that the nation will experience a similar financial crisis in the future. In his report, Stanton points out the need to address past policies' inconsistencies, lack of transparency, and shortcomings in organizational capacity. In order to do so, he recommends a number of steps to:

Tom Stanton's report focuses on the delivery of emergency financial benefits, such as pensions, Social Security, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, as well as payments relating to the disaster such as emergency food stamps, unemployment insurance, and emergency cash assistance.

This report highlights the fundamental tensions that federal credit programs face between doing good and doing well. On the one hand, the government provides support through loans and loan guarantees to borrowers who are not considered adequately served by commercial credit markets. On the other hand, the government cannot afford to lose large amounts of money by paying for an unacceptable number of defaults on federal loans.

The federal government currently administers loan and loan guarantee programs that amount to about $1 trillion of credit outstanding. Credit scoring and loan scoring offer the opportunity for federal credit agencies to devise scoring-based database management systems for a broad range of purposes. When applied to federal direct loans and guarantees, scoring may help some federal credit agencies to improve credit management as well as the implementation of public purposes related to their programs. Financial Management

This important report serves as an excellent companion piece to another published report, “Applying 21st-Century Government to the Challenge of Homeland Security,” by Elaine C. Kamarck of Harvard University. The Stanton report examines the organizational dilemma frequently faced by government: when to create or restructure a government agency or instrumentality. The Kamarck report examines three new forms of government that do not involve the creation of new government organizations or instrumentalities: reinvented government, government by network, and government by market.

This project reviews federal management practices related to real property, personal property, and financial assets for which the federal government is responsible. Financial Management