A message of encouragement and gratitude.

Thank you very much, everybody. originally had 30 minutes to speak and a 55-page speech. I now have about 5 minutes to speak so, as is my normal habit, I'll have to dispense with the speech.

The choice for me was to speak a little longer, thus making the awards ceremony a little shorter or to speak only briefly. I think it's far more important to recognize the good work that's being done by the folks out there in this hall rather than to have me drone on a few minutes longer.

I'd like to leave you with a few thoughts, then, about the nature of our business. We are now wearing two hats, just about all of us. On the one hand, we're trying our best to continue to produce budgets that stand up and get approved. We're trying to do so in a streamlined way.

The Deputy Secretary just signed MID-913, Management Initiative Decision, itself a new kind of document that has for the first time seriously created a two-year budget process. The process itself is now called Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution [PPBE]. The E in that four-letter connotation, if you will, links us to the financial management side and to what we are also doing in terms of improving the quality of our financial statements, going beyond the four components that already have clean opinions.

Improving our professional management; the certification program, of which ASMC is rightly proud; the new legislation that allows us to give preference to those with certifiable capabilities, whether they're CPAs or others--all that is progressing. And we have a lot to be proud of there.

But we're wearing a second hat today. I alluded to it this morning with the moment of silence. We're managing a country, not just our own. And everyone in this room either directly or indirectly--and, quite frankly, I think it's mostly directly--is involved in ensuring that what we do in Iraq and how we spend the money (not just our money, by the way, but Iraq's money) will hold up not only with our friends at GAO [General Accounting Office] and on Capitol Hill but in the court of public opinion.

It is the people in this room who, as much as anyone, are going to be responsible for winning the peace just like those in uniform who did such a wonderful job in winning the war.

We have created a special cell outlet--the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, or ORHA. We've got a cell out there that consists not only of people from the comptroller office but from the IG [Inspector General], from the Criminal Investigations Service, from OMB [Office of Management and Budget], and from GAO, working with the comptrollers of ORHA itself and the comptrollers of Central Command to ensure that those hundreds of millions of dollars that we found in walls and in holes and on trucks and that belong to the Iraqi people will be spent for the Iraqi people, and that the billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars that Congress voted for the reconstruction of Iraq will be spent in the most efficient way. We're not in the business of $500 hammers in Iraq.

And it's the people here who are making sure of that. The people both in DFAS [Defense Finance and Accounting Service] and in the Services and in the Comptroller office and anyone who is dealing with money are going to come up against what we are doing in Iraq, if you're not doing that already. This is a major change. I don't believe any of my predecessors had an international office in the Comptroller shop. But that small office is working 60 hours a week per person because there's so much to do.

And generally speaking, the efforts, for instance, of the Footnote Working Group--now that sounds strange, a Footnote Working Group. But that is the group that has been ensuring that financial statements footnotes (which are really where the meat of the action is in financial statements) are understandable, clear, and justifiable. Hard work. Very hard work--the work we're moving away from practices that have been enshrined and trusted for the last 20 or more years.

Those who are working on financial statements, many of whom have so many other things to do, are making a tremendous contribution to the way the Department works. The various comptrollers in the various shops now have to deal not only with a cyclical kind of system where they have a few months in the year where life is terribly intense and they kind of decompress a few other months in the year [but also with] working 24/7 every day. And that's been going on since September 11.

And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

So instead of droning on, I think it's far more important that we recognize those who've done so well, that I thank you all for your contributions.

And all I can say is I encourage you--because in many ways the eyes of the world are on you all--to continue the good work you're doing because the pride of our country right now is not just what's measured at home, but what is being measured every day in the Middle East.

SAN DIEGO CHAPTER ANNOUNCES ITS CHAPTER GRANT PROGRAM

To show our appreciation of ASMC chapters' support of San Diego's PDI '99 and upcoming PDI '06, the chapter is giving its money away! We have created a grant program that will annually award three $1500.00 grants to bona fide chapters. The award will be based on a balance between need and planned use. The program is open to all chapters, regardless of size or location. In addition to basic chapter information, the application asks for your chapter's:

* 6 month forward and backward schedule of events

* Copy of chapter's most recent annual financial report and most recent periodic treasurer's report

* Proposed use of the grant

* A short narrative - Why should your chapter be selected?

Download an application from the Chapter's web page. http://asmcsd.web.aplus.net/index.php

Follow the links to the President's Page.

Or request an application from San Diego Chapter Vice President, Pat Sanders, at [e-mail], copy to Chapter Secretary, Deborah Wignall, at [e-mail].

Submission deadline is 15 November 2003. Check the chapter's web site for confirmation of the final submission deadline. Awardees will be notified within 30 days of the submission deadline. Check the San Diego Chapter web page (Members link) for the most current Vice President and Secretary contact information.

CDR Gregory Martin, SC, USN President

The Honorable Dov S. Zakheim Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)