Intragovernmental Transactions: Seeking a Solution to Perennial Imbalances in Accounting for Agency-to-Agency Financial Transactions

Despite significant improvements in recent years, the federal government has failed to achieve a clean audit of its consolidated financial statements for 12 years running. One major obstacle has been its inability to adequately account for business transactions among its own departments and agencies—transactions that amounted to over $63 billion in 2007 alone. With generous support from MasterCard International; Kelly, Anderson and Associates, and Grant Thornton, the National Academy hosted a forum in April 2008 of seasoned public and private sector leaders to discuss efforts under way to identify and apply both public and private sector solutions to this continuing problem.