31 U.S.C. § 503 — Functions of Deputy Director for Management

(a) Financial management functions Subject to the Director's direction and approval, the Deputy Director for Management sets governmentwide financial management policy for federal executive agencies. This job includes many specific tasks: doing all of the Director's financial-management duties, including any the President delegated to the Director; giving overall direction to the executive branch on financial management by setting policies and requirements and watching how agencies' financial systems work; reviewing agency budget requests for financial systems and advising the Director on the money needed to build, run, and fix major problems in those systems; recommending changes to agency budget and legislative proposals so they match the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) financial management plans; tracking how the budget is actually being spent, including through timely performance reports; overseeing and periodically reviewing agencies' financial management structure and recommending changes to agency heads; setting and maintaining qualification standards for agency Chief Financial Officers and Deputy Chief Financial Officers appointed under sections 901 and 903 (not counting officers appointed under section 901(c)); advising agency heads on picking their Chief Financial Officers and Deputy Chief Financial Officers (again, excluding section 901(c) appointees); advising agencies on hiring, evaluating, and keeping other financial staff; judging how qualified financial staff are governmentwide and recommending fixes; settling disputes among agencies over financial management policy; chairing the Chief Financial Officers Council set up by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990; talking with state and local government financial officers and sharing information on financial standards and methods; and issuing other policies needed to carry out this section, plus any other task the Director assigns. (b) General management functions Subject to the same Director oversight, the Deputy Director for Management also sets governmentwide general (non-financial) management policy. This includes: coordinating and overseeing OMB's own general management work; doing all the Director's management-related duties (including delegated presidential duties) covering performance measurement systems, procurement policy, grants and cooperative agreements, information and statistics policy, property management, human resources, regulatory affairs, and other management areas like organizational studies, long-range planning, program evaluation, productivity, and pilot programs; giving the President, Congress, and the public complete, reliable, timely information about executive branch management; helping Congress and the executive branch improve government operations and remove obstacles to good administration; chairing the Chief Information Officers Council set up under 44 U.S.C. § 3603; leading management innovation through pilot programs and adopting modern management ideas and technology; working with state and local governments to strengthen intergovernmental relations and help with intergovernmental programs; recommending changes to agency budget and legislative proposals so they match program evaluations and OMB's general management plans; advising agencies on hiring, evaluating, and keeping management staff; and any other task the Director assigns. (c) Program and project management Subject to the Director, the Deputy Director for Management (or someone designated) must: adopt governmentwide standards, policies, and guidelines for how agencies manage programs and projects; oversee agencies putting those standards into practice; chair the Program Management Policy Council created under section 1126(b); set standards matching widely accepted program and project management practices; work with the private sector to find best practices that could improve federal program management; review the government's portfolio of programs the Government Accountability Office has flagged as high-risk; conduct portfolio reviews of agency programs at least once a year, working with each agency's Project Management Improvement Officer (designated under section 1126(a)(1)), to check program management quality; and set a five-year strategic plan for program and project management. This program-management requirement mostly does not apply to the Department of Defense, to the extent DOD's own rules under 10 U.S.C. chapter 87, or its own program-management policies and guidance, already cover substantially the same ground.