A Few Updates on the PFM Blogosphere

Posted by Michel Lazare

The (still) small world of the Public Financial Management blogs is moving. Here are a few news:

1. The MTEF Blog (see our August 22 post "Welcome to the new MTEF blog") now goes by the name "MTEF is the Bayesian Heresy." This results from the merge in principle on January 1 (but already effective in practice) of the MTEF blog with the Bayesian Heresy Blog (see in particular the December 8 posting of the Bayesian Heresy "announcing a bail out and a merge."

De facto, the Bayesian Heresy blog had not published many posts over the last few months. The MTEF blog has already inherited the rather eclectic choice of topics of the Bayesian Heresy blog, while keeping a marked for fiscal issues in general (see in particular its recent posts on MTEF and on performance budgeting). We wish full success to this new version of the MTEF blog.

2. AGA, the Association of Government Accountants (see below), created a quite interesting blog on April 1, 2008 (no jokes). The AGA Blog has since then published every few days the personal views of guest bloggers on accounting and public financial management issues. The topics are largely focused on US issues, but the posts constitute an informative and stimulating reading. We wish Godspeed to this already quite successful blog.

Here is how the AGA describes itself on its website:

Since 1950, the Association of Government Accountants has been—and remains today—the educational organization dedicated to the enhancement of public financial management. AGA serves the professional interests of financial managers, from local, state and federal governments, as well as public accounting firms, responsible for effectively using billions of dollars and other monetary resources every day.

For more than 50 years, AGA has been addressing the issues and challenges facing government financial managers.

Our organization has been instrumental in developing accounting and auditing standards and in generating new concepts for the effective organization and administration of financial management functions, including the passage of the Inspector General Act of 1978 and the Chief Financial Officer's Act of 1990. AGA conducts independent research and analysis of all aspects of government financial management. These studies have led AGA to be recognized as a leading advocate for improving the quality and effectiveness of government fiscal administration.

3/ Change of guard at the "CBO Director's Blog." Nearly a year ago, we announced the creation of the Director's Blog in our January 22 post. The then CBO director was Peter Orszag. Peter has since then been designated as the future Director of OMB in the Obama administration. Understandably, Peter has already given up his responsibilities as CBO Director and editor of the Director's blog; both are now assumed by the CBO Acting Director, Robert A. Sunshine.

With these updates on the PFM blogosphere, we wish to our readers an excellent New Year.

Comments

[Doug Hadden]

The blog for the International Consortium on Government Financial Management (http://icgfm.blogsport.com) is active with 96 blog posts since May. This blog covers PFM and provides a synopsis of conference and forum presentations. It also provides links to the International Journal on Government Financial Management.