USDA Office Of The Chief Financial Officer
With all the current news on scandals in corporate America with respect to accounting fraud, we thought this week we would review the website of one of the federal governments financial offices. If the USDA were a private firm, it would in the words of the Department, "be the sixth largest company in the United States with over 100,000 employess, $77 billion in spending and a $128 billion in assests".

The website contains the annual and multiyear strategic plans of the agency and performance measures for measuring progress. How many publicly traded companies report their activities in the level of detail?

Of particular import is the fact that the Office of the Chief Financial Officer has made it very clear that all information disseminated by the office is subject to the Data Quality Act.

What is the signifcance of having publicly traded companies subjecting themselves to the Data Quality Act?