OMB Establish Working Capital Funds for Agencies

2. Establish working capital funds (WCFs) for all federal agencies.

The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should
facilitate WCFs for all appropriate federal agencies as part of the
fiscal year 1995 budget at the cross-agency levels. OMB should initiate
discussions with each major agency to implement this recommendation.
Each agency should design a charter that specifies the intended purposes
for the WCF (e.g., information technology investments) and establishes a
minimum set of safeguards such as annual inspector general audits.

Each stage of the funds' operations would use safeguards. These would
include, but not be limited to, sound peer review of proposals,
effective project management oversight that relies on various measurable
indicators of progress and regular reviews, and post- project audits.
Since the WCFs would be concerned with larger and more technically
complex projects than those addressed by the agency level ICFs, a
correspondingly more thorough due diligence process evaluating proposals
and more sophisticated oversight of project management should be used.

In addition to agency level WCFs, pilot programs could also test the
feasibility of possible regional or local WCFs during fiscal year 1994.