Inside Government Finance

Megan - 00:00:33: Today, my guest is Tonya Johnson-Simmons. Tonya is an accomplished executive in the federal government and currently holds the esteemed position of Deputy Chief Financial Officer for the Department of the Interior, or DOI. As a trailblazer, she stands as the first woman to be appointed to this pivotal role. Overseeing an impressive portfolio of $159 billion in assets. In her multifaceted role, Tonya serves not only as the deputy CFO, but also assumes the responsibilities of the director of the Office of Financial Management, senior travel official, and donation senior manager within the department. Reporting directly to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, Finance, Grants, and Acquisition, she plays a pivotal role in shaping and executing financial policies, accounting practices, and strategic financial initiatives. With an extensive 32-year career in the federal government, Tonya is widely recognized as an expert in financial management and accounting. Her purview includes providing strategic direction, planning, monitoring, oversight, and coordination across various financial domains, such as policy, reporting, analysis, data analytics, travel management, public-private partnerships, donation processing, internal controls reviews, fraud awareness, risk management, and audits, both internal and external. Beyond her professional achievements, Tonya holds academic accolades, including a Master of Accountancy with a concentration in Forensic Accounting from Strayer University, an MBA from the University of Maryland, and a BS in Accounting. She is a distinguished graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Senior Fellows. Currently pursuing a PhD in public administration at Liberty University, Tonya is a proud former Norfolk State University Spartan hailing from Suffolk, Virginia. Tonya, thank you very much for joining me on today's episode of CFO Weekly.

Tonya - 00:03:06: Thank you, Megan. I'm excited to be here.

Megan - 00:03:08: Yeah, today we're talking about the evolving role of the CFO in government and beyond. And I'm excited to learn more about this topic and from your experiences. So let's get started.

Tonya - 00:03:19: Okay, let's get started.

Megan - 00:03:21: First, and just so that we know a little bit about you, can you start by just giving us a brief overview of your career to date?

Tonya - 00:03:28: So my career to date has consisted of me being in the federal government for 32 years. I've had the opportunity and honor to work at several different federal agencies, including Department of Health and Human Services, where I worked at NIH. I've also worked at DOD in Air Force and Defense Strap Reduction Agency, USDA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, OPM, DOI. So I've been around a little bit and been here in government since 1991. So quite a bit of time.

Megan - 00:04:04: What initially drew you to government?

Tonya - 00:04:08: Well, initially, I think coming from a small town in Virginia, Suffolk, Virginia, I've always wanted to be a servant. And I've always thought about what is the best way to be a servant and to give back to my community and to just people as a whole. And so government has always been on my radar to kind of work in and go and try to see what I can do to kind of help bridge any gaps or share information in how we can do better in government. And so I've always wanted to do that. I wanted to be that that individual to do that.

Megan - 00:04:37 Yeah, that's amazing. So can you share what initially drew you to a career in financial leadership and how your experiences have shaped your approach as a CFO?

Tonya - 00:04:48: So I think initially what drew me to accounting, period, was my mom. So my mom used to work as an accountant for this small company and I got fascinated with accounting. And so from high school on, I took accounting courses. But what drew me to leadership probably early on in my federal career was looking back at just inclusion. And so I did not see a lot of women in CFO roles or in leadership roles in financial management in the government at the time. You got to think I've been in government for 30 some years. And so I felt like women could also come in and bridge that gap and provide leadership. Sometimes when you don't see individuals that look like you, you want to make sure you do. And so you step into that role. And so I started immediately joining different organizations within government. If they needed an employee representative, I would be that employee representative to speak for the employees. And from there, I think that. Love of being able to set the tone and provide feedback just grew and grew and grew. So that's what started it.

Megan - 00:05:53: Yeah. Over the last 32 years, have you seen it get better for women? Do you see that there's more women in leadership roles or are things sadly staying mostly the same?

Tonya - 00:06:03: I think we have grown. I think we still have work to do. I will say this. I sit on the United States CFO Council, and I can definitely see the difference that women have grown. I only see women in CFO roles and in leadership throughout government now that we really didn't see at the forefront before. And so I think the government is also diversifying, including more women and bringing the best person, period, to the table to kind of lead these roles. And so definitely see the difference and glad to be a part of that new dynamic that's happening in government.

Megan - 00:06:37: Yeah, that's good news.

Tonya - 00:06:38: Yes.

Megan - 00:06:40: So how do you define the strategic role of the CFO in today's complex financial landscape, particularly within government agencies? And what unique challenges do CFOs face in this environment?

Tonya - 00:06:53: So I think that the CFO role in government is probably a little different than maybe private industry. First off, the CFO role in government is mandated by the CFO Act, and it has special requirements. But over the years, what we have seen is the CFO role grow and expand. Usually we were just the accountant pushers and looking for things related to audit. But now financial management has grown. We're more so oversight of the whole entire entity, working closely with chief information officers, enterprise risk management leaders. And so the portfolio in being strategic is looking at the entire plan, just not accounting management, because what normally happens is there's a breakdown in your accounting area. Nine times out of 10, it probably happened in a program. And so you have to understand the programs. You have to network. You have to be more than just financial management. You have to be strategic with your approach and be able to encompass all of the information and making sure that you can direct individuals to the right process. Particularly, I will say, prioritizing what's important to that agency, because different agencies have different priorities. Department of Interior's priorities. We have several different missions because we have several different bureaus. We can go from managing the parks to managing the land. So our mission changes, but you have to be strategic in understanding the overall portfolio of that agency or that organization to make sure that you can speak to all of it, just not the financial management scope of it.

Megan - 00:08:27: And governmental agencies, do they have CEOs? Who sets the strategy for these entities?

Tonya - 00:08:35: So normally they don't, government doesn't have CEOs.

Megan - 00:08:38: Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

Tonya - 00:08:39: Some of them may. Yeah, they didn't. Some of them may have CMOs or COOs, chief management officer or chief operating officers, but it's all based on how that government agency is structured. Usually the head of the agency is probably run by either administrator or what we call a secretary or something of that. And then they may have, like I said, a CMO, chief management officer or chief operating officer that operates in that role. It all depends on how it's structured. At DOI, we don't have either, but we have what we call an assistant secretary that kind of oversees various areas of it. We're so large that we have 66,000 employees and so many different bureaus that they have assistant secretaries that kind of report to the depth secretary or the secretary that's head of the department. And that's how we are usually, that's how we are situated. When I was at OPM, we had a COO, which was a chief operating officer. So it just depends on how the government agency culture and the environment is set up.

Megan - 00:09:43: And with your experience managing $142 billion portfolio, which is just astounding, but what key strategies have you implemented to ensure effective oversight and accountability? And how do you prioritize financial initiatives in these vast portfolios?

Tonya - 00:10:03: So I would say, so the portfolio has grown a little bit to $159 million. So that's a good thing. But I think one of the key strategies that I had to do was I had to take a step back and first of all, acknowledge the structure. So when I first came to deal, I had to look at the structure of the Office of Financial Management and determine, are we actually structured in the way we did? So that means doing an assessment of your own self and making sure that we were responsive to the public, to our stakeholders, internal and external, and to the employees as broad. And so I think one of the key strategies I had to implement was how can I be effective in oversight? And to do that, I had to do some reorganization to get the structure right. And then once we got the structure right, now what we do is we look at our, I look through this through an independent review and validation process, which we call IV&B. And so we go out and we look at different areas within the department to make sure, hey, we have the proper controls. We have the proper oversight. Are we prioritizing our financial initiatives? Are we inclusive, but also setting a tone for oversight? And so it's a continuing process because government is still evolving. New governance structures, new things, new guidance comes out. New laws may come out. New regs may come out, depending on the administration. So it's a constant independent review and reorg and shift to make sure you encompass all the financial initiatives particularly fraud is heavily not only in government, but outside of government. You have people hacking. So you have to make sure you incorporate that. it enterprise risk management, you have to make sure you incorporate that. So what are your risks at the department level? And make sure you kind of address those before they become a risk to the agency as a whole. So various different ways to look at this. First of all, I think it was taking a step back and just looking at the portfolio. Are we structured right? Can we meet this? Can we do this? And then doing reorganization and developing strategies throughout independent reviews and validation processes.

Megan - 00:12:08: And just speaking of cybersecurity, I imagine that, like you said, the government is a big target. So how are you, how do you go about managing that type of a risk?

Tonya - 00:12:21: So one of the things that we're doing, or we have done, so not only have we developed internal control work group training. We've also developed fraud risk management. So one of the early initiatives when I first got here, it was like, hey, we got employees of 66,000 employees. How do we protect them? How do they know? How do we know if fraud is happening internal or external to the agency and how do we prevent it? So early on, we started doing, first of all, a workshop every year. We would shut down for a week and we would come to them and we provide them various different trainings related not only to financial management, but to where incidents could happen. We also have a fraud training and what we call a deal- Ideal, Ad Talent System. And this is where anybody at DOI can go in and they can get training on fraud. And then what we do is use real, real live incidents on maybe cyber, maybe something happened from somebody hacking a computer or somebody transposing a email address and so forth. And we make them aware of this. We also give them tools to look at and to be aware of. And how cybersecurity attacks can happen, how fraud can happen, how incidents can happen. We just recently in the last 30 days launched a new fraud training that kind of linked some of those different initiatives to that and that they need to look out for this. I think as government agencies evolve, AI may become more useful. We also have what we call bots that kind of help us look at different things that help us close out contracts and we use it throughout the government. So it's various tools that we use. There's various tools that our CIO use. But I think the most important is awareness because, if people do not know that it's happening, they don't know how to prevent it. And then I think also too, is that if people do not understand how cybersecurity or fraud incidents can happen through cybersecurity, they can't protect themselves. And so I think that is the key thing for us is bringing awareness to what it looks like, what could happen, and then helping the employees at DOI to kind of guard themselves. Or be on the lookout. And if they do see an incident, where to report it to.

Megan - 00:14:34: And speaking of AI, but in your view, how can emerging technologies reshape financial operations within the government? And can you share any specific examples of how you're leveraging technology to improve a process or overall efficiency?

Tonya - 00:14:51: So I think AI can be used for good or bad. And I would say, so can, and AI has been around for a long time. When we start looking at, you know, if you have Alexa, if you have Siri, that is a form of AI. But what our business integration office has created was like, we call Bob the closer. And so how we're using that for financial management is that this is our year end process right now. We're at year end. The government closes and shut down its accounting 930. And so in doing that, we have to close out any contracts and reconciliation and so forth. And so what we did was the business integration office did was they created this bot that we call Bob the closer, which automates some of the contract closeouts. It does this by capturing, analyzing and drafting modifications and then emailing contractors like a list of expired contracts for potential closures. And so it takes away of that workload, that normally probably maybe 17 people will do at year end that we estimated. And it helps them to close out and look at different areas. And it's based on a specific type of contract and it helps to close those out, taking the workload off of us. But there's various other things. We have other bots that we use for our small business goals that we use. We have a robot, Bob, that automates the monthly GSA fuel transactions. We also have Jack in the Box, which we use. We use to automate data act files, as well as Bobby, the modifier that kind of helps the contracting officers in drafting contracts that we have maybe with vendors and so forth in prison. So we are using leveraging IT and bots and AI, so to speak, in those different type of ways. I'm pretty sure our OCIO is looking at other ways we can leverage it. One of the things that I always keep in mind is just like we use it for good. You always have those that will use it for bad and making sure that we educate people. And the good and bad use of it, I think, is also important.

Megan - 00:16:47: Yeah, I love the names you've given them.

Tonya - 00:16:50: Yeah, they did a great job at naming these. I don't want to take credit for the names, but yeah, they did a great job at naming these.

Megan - 00:16:56: And given the diverse stakeholders involved in financial management, how do you ensure clear communication of complex financial issues to non-financial personnel? We haven't all been blessed with accounting degrees.

Tonya - 00:17:10: So one of the things that I try to do is I try to be transparent. So for financial management personnel, what I did too is that we did not have a CFOC council. So we have 11 different CFOs at the bureau level. So let's say Fish and Wildlife has their own CFO, National Park Service has their own, and all of the other ones have their own. They all roll up to the CFO and deputy CFO at my level. And so because of that, we did not have a way of communicating. So I created a CFO council to make sure that they are educated and their staff. But in addition to that, for non-financial, what we do is we go out. I have six divisions under me and that we kind of educate through that way. One of the things that I shared with you previously is that we shut down for a week and we reach out to everybody in the department and try to educate them as simple as possible on not only risk, but on different things that are happening in the department and how it affects them. Two is another thing during year. We try to reach out to all the executives in the department because executives, including myself, sometimes we're busy and we're working a lot and we may not understand all the details, but we try to brief them on where we are in their department, try to make sure that they understand how it relates to their specific area, their project, or the area that they're reviewing. And we have different work groups as well. So we may have an internal control work group, we may have an audit management work group. We may have an entity level control work group. And we go out and we share different things and information and we open it up for them to have that communication and dialogue. But more importantly, what we try to do is relate it to that program so they can have that aha moment and they understand. And I think once you do that, then they're more inclined to reach out to you and so forth. Myself, I carry more than just one role at the department. Not only I'm the deputy CFO for the department. I'm also the senior donation official. That means any donations that come into the department that maybe exceed a million dollars. So if we get donations for National Park Service for DC, for the annual fireworks, usually things like that, those things come up to me if they're over a million dollars. I'm also the senior travel official. So being a senior travel official, that means I have oversight of all the travel for the department. And so just various different roles. And because of that, my arm kind of reaches a little long and I can have those one-on-ones. And then too, my staff, as well as myself, we have a open door policy. So if there's any time there is some confusion and you don't understand what's going on and you need it broken down, we open up the door, we schedule a meeting, we make sure that we provide you the tools and the skills so you have an understanding for where we are and for how this affects your program, how it may affect your budget or how it may affect you going forward.

Megan - 00:20:03: Yeah, with 66,000 employees. I imagine it's hard, but building relationships with people is really key.

Tonya - 00:20:11: Yeah, it is. I think building networking and being able to build key relationships and then communicating, we do that also through policy. And so we'll send you policy. We have a financial management handbook that sometimes speaks to SOPs where it may give you the detail, but it also can speak to a high level for an accountant or financial analyst or somebody that's in the financial management arena. They definitely get it. But we want to also make sure those that are not in it understand how it affects their program. So we provide policy. We provide guidance. We also have a SharePoint site where they can access and go to that link to look for various things. So we try to provide as much information we can without overwhelming them. And then if it's still too much, we open the door to have that one-on-one conversation with them to kind of help them connect the dots.

Megan - 00:21:00: And I'm just curious, but what falls under the umbrella of the Department of Interior?

Tonya - 00:21:05: So we have 11 different bureaus that fall under. So National Park Service, that's dealing with all the national parks and so forth for it. We have Fish and Wildlife. Fish and Wildlife, they do a lot of, I should say, rehabilitation for fish and wildlife. We have various areas here. We actually have an area we call Fish and Wildlife, which is a habitat in my hometown of Suffolk, Virginia. We have Bureau of Land Management, which manages all the government's land. I believe that the government owns probably 28% of all land and BLM, which is the Bureau of Land Management, probably manages 20% of that. We have Bureau of Indian Affairs that deal with affairs of our Native Americans. We also have U.S. Geological Survey that deals with the weather and so forth. And so just various different agencies. So when people start, because a lot of people say, well, what does Interior do? And then when I started thinking about telling them all of the various agencies, they were like, wow, I didn't know it encompassed all of that.

Megan - 00:22:05: Yeah.

Tonya - 00:22:05: So it encompasses a huge portfolio for us. Like I said, 11 different bureaus. And that was just some of the ones that I named. But it's a big initiative. And it's things that we provide that we consider important to the American people, being able to go to the parks, being making sure that we preserve wildlife, like the American eagle and the eagle, dealing with wildfires. We deal with that. And so we help out on that. So there's a lot of various different initiatives throughout Department of Interior. And we're widespread. We're not just located in the DMV area. We call, you know, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. We're throughout the United States.

Megan - 00:22:39: Wow. Yeah. What an amazing branch of the government. I love I love the national parks. They're necessary for sure.

Tonya - 00:22:45: It is.

Megan - 00:22:46: So can you discuss a time when you faced a significant financial challenge or crisis and what leadership strategies you tapped into to help navigate the situation?

Tonya - 00:22:56: I would say one of the greatest, probably the most significant financial challenge I had was when I was at Office of Personnel Management at that time. I think that was during that we had the breach that affected twenty, twenty, twenty two million, I think, employees. I mean, I shouldn't say employees. Twenty, twenty, twenty two million people for background investigation. You know, it made the news. So if you have a clearance account, I think that you and so I think Congress came out and they identified that we had to provide 10 years of identity theft protection and they made it a requirement. So I think one of the biggest financial challenges that OPM had was that it was put on us to figure out how to do this? And so leading this effort, we came up with the idea that we would do it based on the background investigation. So basically how many background investigations that each agency had, we would have them do an agreement with OPM. And I managed that entire portfolio, establishing that upfront and how they would have to pay us for us to manage that. And then we provided them identity theft protection for 10 years as required by Congress when this right here came out. So that was a huge thing. Because, you know, it was all over the news. Everybody, 22 million people, information might have gotten hacked or stolen. We didn't know for sure, but we had to provide some type of protection for them. We contracted and procured an identity theft contractor to do that. At that time, background investigations was still with OPM and had not moved back to DOD. And so I led this effort. I had to reach out to all the CFOs. At that time, I was an associate CFO at OPM and had to reach out to all the CFOs. And get them on board with paying their portion of this based on an estimate of how many investigations they have when they have to go get people's security clearances for them. And it proved to be a challenge, but it ended up being a great initiative. It was a great strategy to see all of it come together and how we included that. And then I think it ended up getting a Secretary's Award, OPM for the organization. I was an executive at SES at that time, so of course I could not get one. But the rest of my staff that helped me implement it, we got that. And so I thought that was a big initiative because I was very hands-on in actually calling, setting up the agreements and so forth. So I think that was a big challenge because we were bombarded with, hey, y'all had a breach. It affected 22 million people. How does this affect them in the future? What can we do about this? How can we implement this in developing tools to move forward? So that was probably one of the biggest challenges.

Megan - 00:25:32: Yeah. Kudos to you. That's an amazing feat for sure.

Tonya - 00:25:36: Yes. Thank you.

Megan - 00:25:38: And what are some of the best practices for implementing accountability measures in sensitive financial programs? And how do you balance the need for oversight with fostering a culture of trust within your teams?

Tonya - 00:25:51: That is a good thing. So first of all, I think some of the best practices for implementing oversight and accountability and being sensitive is that it has to start with relationships and making sure you communicate and understand, first of all, why you have to do this and making sure that the either the project manager or the other individual understands why you have to do this and you're sensitive to their program. A part of a challenge of being in this role is that sometimes we can be viewed as, oh, we're going to get in trouble if we tell her or we tell them this is what's going on. And so and how do you balance in that that foster of trust is through relationships and through open communications. I think we have to switch the dialogue from not a blame, but more so, look, I'm here to help you and let me help you get to this point and resolve this. So how do we do that? First of all, meeting one-on-one. I think it's important understanding the environment and maybe what the initiative is, especially with citizens programs, especially when there's also times where we have and we don't have maybe we don't have maybe the actual funding yet as we go through CRS and we're going through that now. And how do we actually move forward with implementing oversight and accountability. But I think it has to do more with the relationship and getting people to trust you. And you have to do that. That takes time. And it took time for me to when I came to deal is changing how we operate, doing a reorganization and letting individuals know that my role in this is oversight for the department. And my goal is to help you. So it won't be an audit finding. Or won't be a issue. You in the future. And sometimes that requires you doing more work in the beginning as with anything and nobody likes more work in the beginning. And so we kind of focus on the outcome and take it step by step. Sometimes by breaking things up into steps, people start to develop a trust. People start opening up and say, yeah, I am having this problem. And it's not so more so as I got you, but more so is, hey, we see this as an issue. Can you help us get through this? And we do that. And I think we're building that. We're continuing to build that relationship. And like I said, we weren't structured originally when I first got here, like in a position where we could do this without stakeholders internally and externally. But I think now they trust us more definitely, internally. And so they're willing to come to us and say, hey, I have an issue. Can you help me? And they trust us to do that without us more so saying, hey, you did this wrong and this could cost the department this. So, I think it has to do with you switching. How you operate and you're switching your tone of what you're actually trying to do and then implement an accountability over it. And one of the things, like I said, is our independent review and validation. We go in and we assess and say, hey, we'd like to recommend that you do this. And more so than saying we require. And so usually through recommendations, they're more willing to accept because they're owning part of this too, more so than we're requiring. And this is why I didn't want to come to you or I didn't want to implement this. So that's how we're kind of working through this.

Megan - 00:28:59: And you mentioned audit findings, but what have your key takeaways been from leading financial audits? And how can CFOs proactively prepare for audits to ensure a smooth process and positive outcomes?

Tonya - 00:29:11: When I first arrived at DOI in 2019, I think one of the things we had a lot of audit findings, I think it was like maybe 19, and we've gotten them down to seven as of last year. And I think one of that is communicating, because I think a part of the audit findings is that, if you do not understand, you know, how this is a finding, then you're not going to be in a position to fix it. And I think one of the key things for us. Was for my office to own, we weren't even structured right to assist you. And so we had to revamp and reorganize. So let me give you an example. We had our audit team and our internal control team that goes out and does assessments in the same group. Well, it's kind of hard for that team to be both, be proactive in kind of mitigating anything that they see when they're busy trying to close out audit recommendations that maybe we get from the government accountability office or the office of inspector general or the independent audit. And then they have to also go out here and focus the same group of people. And so we had to change and reassess how we were operating. And I think once that happened, people were more willing and then we were more able to see these initiatives. So we had to really do a revamp. But then too, is that I think bureaus started looking at their areas to see how can I improve? I think part of the process. It's kind of only where we were broken. And then fixing it. And we still do. We hold ourselves accountable. Like I hold myself accountable. Hey, you still got to do this. You still got to do that. You still got to do this. And we take into consideration any audit findings we get from GAO, the Government Accountability Office, from OIG, Office of Inspector General, and the independent audit. And we see and we review what they're saying. And then we work with the bureaus and, of course, the department as a whole and how we can mitigate it through strategies. How can we better work to address this? Maybe we didn't have policies. Policies is key. If you lack policies, then everybody may be off doing their own things, which can increase audit findings. So it's various ways to work with it. And when you have an organization of this size and you have different bureaus that have different missions, National Parks Mission is different from U.S. Geological Survey. So you have to be sensitive and understand those programs. And you're the audit finders have to be inclusive of their programs and understanding exactly what that audit finding is. And so I think that's how we've been leveraging it and kind of remediating that process going forward.

Megan - 00:31:47: And you've successfully increased revenue from $160 million to $1 billion in programs. So what approaches or frameworks have you used to achieve this growth? And what role does the CFO play in driving growth for their organization?

Tonya - 00:32:01: So I think it depends. So I think the CFO plays a major role in driving growth for the organization. I think this was initially when I was at OPM, one of the things we had was the background investigation. And early on, one of the things that I started to do was do an analysis. So I kind of pulled the financial statements from several years. I think I was over there in 14. I pulled them back for several years. And what I started to see in that specific program is that we had more money going out than we had coming in. So we were charging agencies for the background investigations and so forth. But they were eating up our surplus. So what I first noticed is, hey, we're not structured right. We're not even... We're making our normal budget just to do this. We're losing money. And so I did an analysis. I went back for several years and pulled up month by month to see the money coming in and coming out. And I did a true analysis to say, hey, we might have to change our price structure because this is what I'm finding that I got $500 million in the bank. And each month, my bill is at $85 million, but yet I'm only collecting maybe, I would say, for instance, $75 million. Sooner or later, that surplus is going to go away. And it kept trickling down. So I presented this over a time to the then CFO at the time. And we worked with, he reached out to OMB and said, hey, we might have to do a restructure for the entire government on how we look at background investigations. We might need to do a price restructure. And so we went through a whole year of trying to do a price restructure, changed it. And by the time we were finished in two years, that $160 million that had dwindled all the way down to $160 million had turned back into a billion-dollar program. It's now at DOD. But I think one of the things you have to do is what I say is we have tools now that can do that. But I did it the old-fashioned way at the time. I didn't have the tools. I didn't think about the tools at the time that we could have used at that time. I think it was 14, 15. But I went back and I looked. And I just did a comparison. I think you have to look at what's coming in, what's coming out. Do I have enough budget or money to actually keep us going? Is there a concern that I'm losing money? So it was basically an overall risk analysis from the money coming in, the cash coming in, the cash going out. Have we increased our background investigations? But I think from a CFO perspective, the new role or the roles that we should be playing is looking at everything. And so when we're looking at not only the financial statements and understanding, we have to look at new initiatives that may cost us resources or staff and see are we functioning right? Do we have the right innovative approaches to grow? Do we have the right tools to grow? Do we have the right skill sets to grow? And so I think that is what's going to continue to drive the CFO role going forward is having that overall view, just not of financial management but of the program of new initiatives or things that's to come. And you have to look forward. You just can't look at right now. You have to look forward and kind of prepare, and so, I think, that's going to be the driving force behind new initiatives for CFO being strategic basically.

Megan - 00:35:04: Yeah, when we've talked about how the CFO role has evolved, but finance and accounting in general is also evolving. So how are you cultivating talent within your teams and how are you preparing them for the future?

Tonya - 00:35:17: So one of the things that we do is that, like I said, we shut down for a week, but we also I look for ways that I can help them grow. And so we do this through training. There's various training organization or training companies out there to provide training. So right now, like I have certified fraud examiners on the team. I have certified I have CPAs on the team. I have certified risk managers on the team. We leverage different things such as AGA, which is the Associations of Government Accountants. We leverage their training and we leverage training throughout government to see how we can bring on the best. Sometimes we can't always give them bonus or cash, but we leverage it in training. We look at any new initiatives that's coming out from the Office of Management and Budget or maybe Treasury, and so forth or things that we see, hey, we're not ready. We're not there yet, but we need to get this under our umbrella and we leverage training for the most part. Training, hands on and so forth. If they want to go back to school, we try to leverage that. We're looking at individuals that actually we can bring on or we look for people who embrace that they want to grow, that they want to leverage some of these opportunities. Also through 360, I leveraged a 360 tool, through OPM to try to make sure that we could give them proper feedback, which is, you know, is a list of questions that they sent out to various people. And that feedback comes back and tells them different areas they can improve in, training they can improve in. And then one of the biggest things is that we do forecasts. So right now we're in the process of looking at what are the next things that's coming out over the next few years. We can see this through financial management. It may be something down the line that the standard FASAT, which is the Federal Accounting Standard Advisory Board, may be providing an initiative that may come out or that may be a requirement four or five years from now. We don't wait to that time to come. We start preparing for that now. The same thing with Treasury. Treasury may be having an initiative that's coming forward. But not only that, we kind of stay up to date with what's going on in the public sector. And see, I mean, a private sector, too, to see what's going on. I go and I participate in a lot of things that just not a government. And I do that because there's a lot of things I think government can learn, too, from private sector because eventually it gets to us. So I kind of start looking at that and start doing an analysis to see if it's going to come to government and start preparing a team for that so we can embrace that. But usually it's kind of the same things that you see that's happening outside of government is happening inside of government. It's just that government is usually mandated by law regulation. And we're allowed probably a little bit more time before it actually passes to get it implemented. But leveraging all of those different tools and just making sure we understand what the risk, what are the risks if we don't have the right people and so forth.

Megan - 00:38:06: And how do you envision the role of the CFO evolving over the next three to five years, especially in the public sector? Where is this role heading?

Tonya - 00:38:14: So the CFO, I would say it's evolving more so like a CO, Chief Operating Officer or Chief Management Officer. I can see them becoming more so inclusive, similar to CEOs, because the way we're geared is that there are a lot of things that are impacting financial management. So your focus just can't be on financial management. You have to be at the table for all of it. And I think it's just something that the government is starting to evolve and get to now is that we have to be more involved than just financial management. And you can start to see that. I see that at deal. I'm more involved. Just like I told you, I work more than just the CFO head, the director of financial management. I'm the senior travel official for the department. I'm also the senior donations. Your thinking and your process has to be just more than financial management. You have to start thinking from a programmatic. So I see it continuing to evolve, to expand, to be inclusive of a lot of different areas. I see the CFO, if they were not at the table before, more at the table as a decision making and as a decision factor in going forward. Because now over. Are you responsible for the accounting and the budget aspects from it? You're looking at it from a programmatic and looking at the overall risk for the department and how you can be inclusive of that. So definitely advancing that. I see that growing and continuing to grow as the government continues to grow and change and as new standards and new regs come out as well.

Megan - 00:39:40: Tonya, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Tonya - 00:39:42: Well, thank you, Megan. Hopefully I've been able to provide you some great insight to CFO roles or at least my CFO role at the Department of Interior and some of the great things that my staff and I are doing. And we're still learning through this process. And as the government continues to evolve, we'll still be moving strategically and embracing any new changes and so forth.

Megan - 00:40:03: Well, I really enjoyed speaking with you and I wish you and the Department of Interior all the best. And to all of our listeners, please tune in next week. And until then, take care.