Charting a course through stormy seas: State financial executives in 2012

State financial executives help their states weather ongoing financial storms while continuing to produce results for citizens by eliminating inefficiencies and waste, improving the timeliness of financial reporting, and using high-performance best practices.

Because state and local governments often provide the most direct services to citizens, understanding financial constraints at the state and local levels is critical for grasping how government is going to respond to continuing financial pressures. Declining revenues with little relief coming from the U.S. economy, along with continued high demand for services means that state and local government financial leaders still face a hard road ahead. This is the second annual report based on responses from 357 state and local government financial leaders conducted between March and June 2012. These are just some of the findings from the 2012 survey of state and local financial government financial leaders conducted by National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers, the Association of Government Accountants, and Grant Thornton.

Among other insights, we have found that:

• Financial executives are not making much use of the cloud for their financial systems or other state and local government systems.
• Financial executives and their workforces have different views of leadership and trust in state and local governments.
• The right people are the key to success.

Download the state CFO survey

Download the 2012 survey of federal CFOs