AFERM selects the U.S. Treasury Department, the Veterans Benefits Administration, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration as recipients of its 2024 Federal ERM Agency Awards
On Tuesday, November 12th, at its 17th Annual ERM Summit held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, AFERM recognized three federal agencies for significant progress and notable achievements in the implementation and practice of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM).
The U.S. Treasury Department received the ERM Luminary Award, and the Veterans Benefits Administration and NOAA received the ERM Notable Achievement Award.
The Luminary Award recognizes agencies that have attained an advanced level of maturity and demonstrated a broad range of accomplishment in the implementation and practice of ERM. The Notable Achievement Award recognizes agencies that have achieved impressive growth or realized a significant milestone in their ERM program.
Jason Bruno, president of AFERM, in presenting the awards at the Summit, noted that, “the award winners have shown how ERM has had a positive impact, demonstrating the value that ERM can provide in helping agencies deliver on their goals and objectives.”
Treasury’s ERM program was launched in 2014 and was among the first ERM programs initiated in the Federal Government. In 2022, the program was aligned with the Office of Strategy, Planning and Performance Improvement, fostering the integration of ERM into the budget and planning processes. ERM has become firmly embedded in the Department’s governance processes, and it is a key component of the Strategic Objective Annual Review process where robust discussions of the trade-offs that need to be made when prioritizing risk responses occur, enabling the Department to better articulate what can be accomplished within available resources and timeframes.
The Veterans Benefits Administration and NOAA’s ERM programs were initiated in 2019 and 2015 respectively. The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has taken significant steps to integrate ERM into their budget process, requiring the linkage of risks to budget submissions in the agency’s Budget Request Intake Tool. VBA also launched an ERM Community of Practice, deployed an ERM Playbook, and implemented new deep-dive review and analysis sessions for specific enterprise risks.
NOAA was a recipient of the AFERM Luminary Award in 2023 and they have leveraged their successes to further strengthen and enhance their program. They developed a risk mitigation cost estimation guide, expanded their Risk Consequence Scoring Tool to factor in the positive upside perspective of risk, and implemented a new online solution for their risk register and risk profile.
“We are pleased to see how ERM is evolving within the federal government,” said Bruno, “with agencies linking risk to their planning and budgeting processes, while also promoting greater awareness and understanding of risk to help improve decision-making and, ultimately, better enabling mission delivery.”
AFERM is a professional association dedicated to the advancement of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in the government through thought leadership, education, and collaboration. For more information about AFERM or the ERM awards program, visit www.AFERM.org or call 760-512-3376.