In the past 16 years, a number of laws, accounting standards, system requirements, and related guidance have emphasized the need for cost information in the federal government, establishing requirements and accounting standards for managerial cost accounting (MCA) information. In light of these requirements, GAO was asked to determine how federal agencies generate MCA information and how government managers use that information to support their decisions and provide accountability. Since 2005, GAO has reviewed and reported on MCA practices at 10 large civilian agencies resulting in five reports. This report brings the overall observations of these studies together in one place.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.

Managerial cost accounting is the financial and managerial tool that is used to estimate the organizational cost of products and services in business and government. In recent decades, cost accounting in the United States and other advanced industrial countries has been dominated by discussions of Activity Based Costing or ABC. While ABC can be shown to produce a more accurate estimate of cost than older and more basic types of cost accounting, ABC is not used extensively in many governments. We argue that this recent focus on ABC has stifled examination and discussion of how government cost accounting is being used and how it could be used in practice. The study of cost accounting practice reveals an important and underexplored area of financial management in government. Given the scandals that cost accounting estimates can create and that different types of cost accounting can create different estimates of cost it may be reasonable to ask whether the cost accounting exercise is worth it? Cost Accounting in Government: Theory and Applications addresses these unusual and unusually important topics through a series of studies of different government cost accounting practices. The first section of the book presents two chapters on the history and basic elements of cost accounting. The second section of the book provides further discussion and case studies of actual cost accounting practices in the main areas that cost accounting has been used in government: benchmarking the performance of government services, rate setting, grant overhead cost recovery, and cost management. The last two chapters discuss cost accounting practices in Europe and the future of cost accounting. These cases span local and federal governments and provide a much needed context to the study of cost accounting in government. Aimed at academics, researchers and policy makers in the fields of Accounting, Public Administration, and Government Studies, Cost Accounting in Government: Theory and Applications seeks to address the practical and theoretical gap in government cost accounting research with case studies of different public agencies that are using cost accounting for different purposes. The case studies illustrate that different purposes for cost accounting create unique and interesting cost accounting practices. The case studies provide useful examples of actual cost accounting systems that can inform both research and instruction

Fed. gov¿t policymakers are interested in user fees as a means of financing new and existing services. User fees can be designed to reduce the burden on taxpayers to finance the portions of activities that provide benefits to identifiable users above and beyond what is normally provided to the public. User fees can promote economic efficiency and equity. However user fees must be well designed. This report studies how user fee design characteristics may influence the effectiveness of user fees. The author examined how the 4 key design and implementation characteristics of user fees -- how fees are set, collected, used, and reviewed -- may affect the economic efficiency, equity, revenue adequacy, and administrative burden of cost-based fees.

The fed. gov¿t. must seek to deliver results more efficiently. The prior Administration sought to improve efficiency under the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) by requiring programs to have at least one efficiency measure and procedures for improving efficiency, and show annual efficiency gains. This report examined: (1) the types of PART efficiency measures and the extent to which they included typical elements of an efficiency measure; (2) the extent to which selected programs showed gains and how they used efficiency measures for decision making; (3) the challenges selected programs faced in developing and using efficiency measures; and (4) other strategies that can be used to improve efficiency. Illustrations.

This book analyses the role of public sector accounting, and the relevance of accounting frameworks, in assisting financially sustainable policy making. Focussing on the European context, the book examines financial reporting, management accounting, budgeting and other reporting requirements, for example, Government Finance Statistics. It also analyses emerging forms of reporting, such as popular reporting and integrated reporting, which may also be considered by policy makers, standard setters, and managers of public sector entities.