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Andy Rider, Director, Unison Planning, Budgeting, Forecasting (PBF)
Audits were never supposed to be the mission. But for many federal teams, they’ve become the center of gravity. Hours are consumed chasing documents, sorting through disconnected systems, and retracing steps from months ago.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) spotlighted the issue in its June 2025 memorandum. “Federal auditing does not work,” wrote Director Russell Vought, citing repeated failures in funds control and procurement oversight. After reviewing the audits, the Department of Government Efficiency found that traditional oversight is too slow, reactive, and structurally flawed.
Fragmentation Fuels Risk
Federal budgeting and acquisition were never meant to live on separate tracks. Yet that’s how many agencies operate. Budget teams track appropriations, monitor obligations, and manage transfers and reprogrammings during execution. Acquisition teams define requirements, award and manage contracts, and report vendor performance through closeout. Each side works on different timelines, inside different systems, and often speaks a different language.
These functions are supposed to converge at key moments like fund availability, obligation, and closeout. In reality, they struggle to align. Teams exchange spreadsheets and email threads to reconcile conflicting information, in some instances focusing on penny line items. This friction appears long before an audit, in the form of missed deadlines, expired funds, and stopgap workarounds.
By the time an audit confirms the issue and a weakness is recorded, the damage is already in the rearview.
From Afterthought to Awareness
The OMB memo also signals a path forward. Many problems agencies face—misaligned timelines, incorrect funding paths, and unclear approvals—don’t emerge all at once. They unfold gradually during budget execution.
To prevent them, agencies need to see the issues as they happen.
That requires systems designed for observability. Not as a bolt-on reporting layer, but as a native capability. Auditability must be built into the daily flow of work, providing a live and contextual view of budget and acquisition activity.
Lifecycle Thinking, Not Line-Item Views
Many federal leaders talk about lifecycle management. However, many homegrown agency systems only show fragments. A requirement is logged in one place, awarded somewhere else, tracked in another, and closed out in yet another. Meanwhile, budget systems operate independently, recording obligations and outlays without connecting them to contract-level intent, let alone measured outcomes.
Proper accountability comes from unifying these views. Instead of collapsing functions or recreating data, agencies need systems that show everyone the same picture. When a budget analyst and a contracting officer can follow a requirement from planning to performance, they’re equipped to catch problems before they escalate.
That’s the heart of modern auditability: early insight instead of late explanations.
Audit Always-On, Not Post-Mortem
What if the audit wasn’t something that came after the work? What if it was already underway?
- When a contract reaches a threshold, the system flags the right approvals, notifies the right people, and records their decisions.
- When funds are obligated, they are automatically tied to the correct appropriation, purpose, and statutory authority.
- When a cost estimate is developed, the budget system registers it as intent and tracks its progress to obligation.
- When policies or pricing guidance change, those inputs adjust system behavior without requiring manual input.
You don’t fix oversight by adding checkpoints. You fix it by designing systems that guide decisions as they happen.
Accountability Without the Drag
Oversight is often treated as a necessary burden. A pause button for the sake of taxpayer stewardship. But in today’s operating climate, that model falls short. Agencies need speed, control, and clarity, without sacrificing any one for the other.
What they need are smarter connections. Systems that track activity as it unfolds. Tools that create context without slowing progress. This creates auditability that is built into the process, moving with the work instead of chasing it.
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