Program Integrity - Kearney & Company

Kearney & Company’s program integrity services help federal clients prevent fraud, strengthen oversight, and build public trust. Additionally, our program integrity services help our clients safeguard public funds, improve efficiency, and stay ahead of evolving compliance requirements.

As one of the nation’s largest financial statement audit practices focused on government, Kearney brings firsthand experience in identifying opportunities to improve internal controls, reduce improper payments, and identify and mitigate risks to mission achievement.

Whether you require an end-to-end solution or targeted expertise, Kearney delivers tailored program integrity solutions to meet your needs. Our expert consultants provide guidance in the following areas:

Risk Management and Compliance: Enterprise risk management and fraud risk management are essential for safeguarding federal programs, ensuring strategic objectives are met while proactively identifying vulnerabilities. By embedding risk awareness into agency operations, these initiatives strengthen decision-making, enhance accountability, and maintain program integrity.

Internal Control Assessments: Robust internal controls are vital to ensuring reliable information, reducing operational risk, and promoting the effective stewardship of taxpayer resources. Ongoing assessment and sustainment efforts not only support OMB Circular A-123 requirements but drive continuous improvement, enabling agencies to operate with confidence and transparency.

Improper Payment Reduction: Preventing improper payments is essential to maintaining public trust in America’s Bank Account and confirming federal funds are used as intended. Through data-driven assessments and root cause analysis, Kearney develops targeted remediation strategies and payment integrity initiatives to help agencies comply with the Payment Integrity Information Act (PIIA), reduce waste, and strengthen enterprise-wide program performance.

Audit Readiness and Response: Kearney’s experience as the nation’s third-largest federal financial statement audit practice makes us a strategic and proactive partner that designs and implements business process improvements to withstand audit scrutiny and meet federal requirements. We are adept at implementing business process change and new technologies to decrease audit risk and remediate deficiencies.

Insights

Federal CFO Playbook: Getting Ready for Payment Modernization

The Department of the Treasury’s move toward pre-payment verification will reshape how agencies manage funds. Chief Financial Officers must prepare their organizations, processes, and controls to preferably avoid, but also handle payment holds and rejections.

Leading Insights: Integration of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Capabilities and Potential Challenges

This is a reprint of an article that appeared in the July 2024 AFERM Newsletter. Integration, as it relates to the maturity of agencies’ Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs, has been a hot topic recently. According to the Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO) Council and Performance Improvement Council (PIC), Playbook: Enterprise Risk Management in the U.S. Federal Government (ERM Playbook), “Successful integration of ERM into agencies’ day to day decision-making and management practices enables agencies to leverage opportunities and avoid, mitigate, and transfer risk, resulting in more resilient, effective, and efficient programs.”

Using Value to Drive ERM Adoption

ERM allows agencies to detect risks across the full spectrum of strategic, operational, compliance, and reporting objectives, ties them directly to mission delivery, and then engrains risk management processes into the fabric of the organization.

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Straightforward Changes with Complex Solutions

As technology continues to advance, so must the controls that support the development of secure and resilient Federal information systems. Do you know what the new NIST SP changes mean for you and your organization?

Management’s Responsibility for Enterprise Risk Management and Internal Control

While the idea of fraud can be daunting, Federal agencies must know their responsibilities to prevent/mitigate it.

Keep Datasets Clean Using Data Quality Assessments

The Information Age has created a universe of data requiring rapid organizational change. The volume, velocity, and variety of the data has resulted in disjointed systems, siloed repositories, and a lack of communication around common challenges. As data degrades over time, the amount of organizational effort required to correct it grows exponentially.

Pandemic Relief Funds Unemployment Benefits Application Online Form on laptop

AGA Intergovernmental Forum: Managing and Overseeing Pandemic Relief Funds

Delivery of pandemic relief benefits required workarounds and innovative approaches under daunting circumstances. This experience led to the recognition of the need to invest in systems, technology, and streamlined but controlled processes to deliver benefits timely and accurately in the future.

No Inherent Trust?

The ingenuity of cyber-attacks is increasing every day, and each organization must have that same thought process when conceptualizing a Zero Trust environment.

Tableau Capabilities Federal Agency Kearney Blog

Tableau Capabilities to Improve Federal Agency Oversight and Monitoring

Creating effective dashboards allows oversight and monitoring to move more quickly and gives the ability to focus on areas of concern that matter to stakeholders.

Insights

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