All Financial Management Personnel Fully-Qualified

1. Ensure that all financial management personnel are fully qualified.

CFO candidates should have relevant experience and stature within the
financial community. Heads of agencies should ensure that the deputy
CFOs are equally qualified, because with the CFOs they can form a strong
team promoting good financial management practices within their agency.
OMB should enlist private sector associations of financial executives to
provide names of qualified candidates, or to develop a rating system of
candidates for high-level positions much like the American Bar
Association provides for U.S. Supreme Court nominees.

Agencies should improve the quality of personnel hired into financial
management positions. They should seek out financial management
candidates in the public and private sectors with strong backgrounds in
accounting, finance, and information systems when vacancies occur at all
levels. Agencies should ensure that vacancy announcements are open to
all qualified candidates. Agencies should be able to specify that
candidates are required to have certifications if appropriate, such as
certified public accountants, certified management accountants,
certified internal auditors, and certified fraud auditors, and other
qualifications in the fields of information systems, budgeting, and
finance. Other National Performance Review (NPR) recommendations dealing
with personnel issues suggest the decentralization of the recruitment
process, which would allow financial managers to raise the
qualifications screening factors in order to ensure that the most
qualified candidates will score at the top of a list of ranked
applicants.[Endnote 10]