Air Force accounting and finance office.

Colonel Williams is on terminal leave with a retirement date of February 1, 2004. He has provided over 27 years of outstanding leadership and innovation to the Air Force and we were fortunate to have him leading the AFAFO and providing oversight to the Accounting and Finance Operations at the MAJCOMs and bases. The entire financial management community will miss him.

Although we are still awaiting Col Williams replacement, we will continue to provide the support the network has come to expect from our office. During this vacancy, we have reorganized to ensure we do not drift off course. I'll be at the controls during this time and will appreciate any vector check feedback from the MAJCOMs.

Let me introduce a couple of new faces we have in our organization. Lt Col Ken Nelson came on board in August 2003 and leads the Finance Division. Lt Col Nelson has already been very active on Military and Travel Pay issues. Lt Col(S) Jeff Manley joined us in September 2003, and has taken over the Accounting Division. Ms Valli Fels came on board in July 2003 replacing Ms Glena Gonzalez. Glena is now a full time member of the TRANSCOM project developing the accounting system of the future. Valli's duties include the Tri-Annual Review, Vendor Pay, and general accounting issues. We recently hired Mr Darryl Brooks in October 2003, who is an analyst for Military Pay, Civilian Pay, and Disbursing. He brings over 30 years of experience to our office. Ms Pat Clayton recently joined our team as a Mission Support Accountant (MSA) and provides us added capability and oversight in the Reserve and Guard Pay area. Finally, our position at our Columbus operation is still vacant. We hope to have a replacement identified and in place soon.

We were very pleased with the feedback and attendance for the August 2003 FSO Worldwide Workshop and our first ever Joint FM and DP Workshop. Over 300 attended this workshop with the theme of supporting our Warfighters--Right Service, Right Attitude, Right Now! Information exchanged and the training provided will further ensure we are all working smarter with the best tools available. The next FSO Workshop is planned for April 2005.

Accounting Division: Update on the Metrics. In June 2003, we provided the first set of MAJCOM metrics that we wrote about in the January 2003 issue of The Air Force Comptroller. We are continuing to work with DFAS to develop a formalized set of metrics for all levels of management. The first phase of the metrics Dashboard will contain 13 metrics, with more to be developed in the coming months. Until Dashboard is fully implemented, we will continue to furnish the current MAJCOM metrics to the field. We have placed the metrics on the AFAFO web site located at http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/, then click on the AFAFO tab and then on the left-hand side click on Metrics. The metrics are divided into three categories, Finance, Accounting, and Training. Tri-Annual Update: You may have noticed revisions to the way we perform the tri-annual review process. These changes took effect in FY 2004. DFAS, MAJCOMs, and the AFAFO were team members of the Air Force End-to-End Governance Review Transformation Project. The team looked at modifying current processes to meet requirements, but also to decrease duplicate workload. The review schedule for FY 2004 as well as an updated DFAS-DE 7220.4-G is available on the DFAS web site (https://dfas4dod.dfas.mil/library/publication/dfasdepubs.htm).

QA Transformation: Help QA to help you. Not just a spin on a movie line, we need your help to change the cultural mindset around the Quality Assurance Program (QAP), and we need to provide you the tools to do it. Remembering the brief history of QA, it's understandable the Air Force Audit Agency finds the current program ineffective. However, to realize our strategic vision of FM, we need to transform QA to emphasize value-added work, effective self-inspections, and eliminate the perception of the hated inspector levying administratively burdensome tasks.

We are revising the QA instruction, AFI 65-202, and expanding the QA Handbook to emphasize the role of the QAM in process improvement, not just as another auditor or inspector. Today, we have over 19 different formal reviews focused on compliance vice performance. What makes the QAM different? The key is this individual is part of the FM team. They are in a unique position to, not only identify discrepancies, but also take part in problem solving, training, and process improvement. Do not misunderstand us, the reviews required of the QAM are vital to our internal controls. What we've accomplished in the revised AFI is to make those reviews cleaner, clearer, and eliminate redundancy. The QA Handbook will have more step-by-step procedures and details on a value-added QAP.

Contract and Vendor Pay Update: Interest penalty payments (IPPs) for vendor pay has achieved the 40% reduction mandated by USD Comptroller. Through September 2003, vendor pay IPPs were a little over $2.7M--which would put us at an overall reduction in Vendor Pay of 42% from the FY 01 baseline. The Air Force is still responsible for almost 68% of this interest in the form of late receiving reports and late certified invoices. AETC, because of their successful Joint Policy and Procedures Committee and implementation of WAWF-RA are reaping the benefits and have reduced their IPPs over 70% in FY03 (as compared to FY01)!

Unfortunately, we did not do as well in the Contract Pay area. For FY03, we paid over $4.4M in interest penalties. Contract Pay are those contracts paid out of MOCAS by DFAS-Columbus. The interest on these contracts is centrally funded by SAF/FM so it doesn't have quite the bite on the wing commanders funds as Vendor Pay does. Nonetheless, these IPP dollars still take away from the overall mission of the Air Force. As we stated in the April 2003 issue of The Air Force Comptroller, decisions made in the mid-1990s on the Gunship contract (dating back to 1988) have resulted in IPPs paid in 2003. This is one of the factors involved with Contract Pay not making the 40% reduction mandated by USD Comptroller.

Plans and Program Division: Reorganization. With the SAF/FMP reorganization, the Banking Program, Government Travel Card, Centrally Billed Accounts, and Government Purchase Card programs now fall under AFAFO responsibility. We've seen numerous audits in these areas which have highlighted some levels of abuse by individual members. Based on the audit findings in Centrally Billed Accounts, improvements in internal controls are necessary to include showing authorizations, providing separation of duties, and implementing controls to prevent double payments. There are also audits in the Government Purchase Card (GPC) arena. SAF/AQ in coordination with SAF/FM is in the process of revising the AFI 64-117, Air Force Government-Wide Purchase Card (GPC) Program, to incorporate audit recommendations. Some of GAOs recommendations require better internal management controls, separation of duties, and proper use of the GPC.

Finance Division: DJMS Cases. We want to share some accomplishments that have helped improve the quality of life for our Air Force members. Primarily, we have seen a significant reduction in pay issues. There were over 75,000 pay cases in September 2002 and we are now below 18,000 (November 2003). Accessions, separations, and demobilizations are the most significant workloads. There's no doubt that the decrease is based upon the teamwork of individuals within personnel and financial offices throughout the Air Force and DFAS. One simple example was Operation Worthy Cause II where Air Force personnel supplemented the DFAS-DE Separations teams for a few weeks. They were able to address 4,500 problems and helped highlight where we can improve our overall process. The biggest lessons from their hard work were the need for the initiating technicians to carefully input data and to carefully coordinate the data to find errors at the local levels. If the errors are caught early enough, the corrections can readily be made.

myPay: myPay continues to be a success as more people recognize its value. Although we remain disappointed that allotments and savings bonds have not yet been added to the services, we recognize that electronic availability of pay documents is a good start and eliminates the members' dependency for hardcopies of W-2s, LESs, and Net Pay Advises. Members can receive these products from any location at any time--and receive them even earlier than a mailed copy. We can't emphasize enough how important it is for each of you to encourage our customers to help themselves by obtaining a myPay PIN and fully utilizing our electronic service.

Kiosks: Fifteen installations are receiving a new ability to provide personnel and financial services with the advent of the Air Force Kiosks. These pilot terminals provide members with 24/7 access to a myriad of personnel, financial, and local installation web sites. Their purpose is to allow members to review their records, update certain information, and obtain simple products from convenient locations throughout an installation. We look forward to providing additional products as we expand the Kiosks' capabilities.