Effective management of account balances carried into the next fiscal year “presents agencies with an opportunity to better respond to unexpected events in the future,” based on how some agencies responded to the 2013 sequestration and partial government shutdown, GAO has said.
GAO examined eight accounts of four agencies–Commerce, Energy, NASA, and State–and found that four of the accounts were used effectively to mitigate the effects of the sequestration and six to were used to keep operations funded despite the shutdown.
It said that best practices include:
* Regularly reviewing the balances throughout the year, for example by conducting monthly reviews of obligations from the prior months.
* Tracking the year of appropriation of accounts that receive multi-year budgetary authority.
* Estimating and identifying needs to retain unobligated balances to sustain agency operations and manage financial risk.
