Overview

With billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds available to states and localities, ensuring financial accountability and transparency has never been more important. Agencies must spend these once-in-a-generation public funds in compliance with external and internal rules and regulations.

Join Government Technology to learn how your organization can use existing data to enhance visibility around spending, detect patterns of non-compliant spending and meet federal reporting requirements. This webinar will show how agencies can leverage machine learning and other advanced technologies to gain a single view of expenditures, glean intelligent insights and identify areas of risk. Projects from SAP’s customer the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will be highlighted and discussed along with other topics in an engaging, panel-driven format.

Speakers

Anna Maria Kiehl — Panelist

Former Commonwealth of PA State Comptroller & Chief Accounting Officer

Anna Maria Kiehl served PA state government for nearly forty years and held the State Comptroller and Chief Accounting Officer position for the last twelve years of her government career. As State Comptroller, she transformed and streamlined her organization by implementing new SAP technologies, consolidating and functionalizing the organization to align with employed technologies and increase capacity, and streamlined processes while standardizing procedures to save tens of millions of dollars during very tight budget times. The transformation led to an office-wide reorganization, fully automated processes, a continuous process improvement culture, a focus on data analytics, and enhanced accountability and transparency. As State Comptroller, Anna Maria was responsible for providing financial management services for all agencies under the Governor’s jurisdiction. Financial management functions included: statewide payroll and travel services, payable services, budget monitoring, accounting and financial reporting, internal controls, quality assurance, continuous process improvement services, LEAN initiatives, and internal audits for agencies.

Abhijit Umbarkar — Panelist

CEO & Founder, The Solutions Company

Abhijit Umbarkar is the CEO and founder of TSC, a niche Public Sector advisory firm, and a business transformation leader and visionary in the area of Public Sector and Higher Ed. His key focus areas are Enterprise Applications, Analytics, Machine Learning, and Big Data. As the CEO of TSC, Abhijit is responsible to drive the company’s vision to become a leading provider of Intelligent Analytics experience for Public Sector customers. Over the last 20 years and prior to founding TSC, Abhijit worked with several Big 5 consulting firms, serving large Public Sector customers, and led programs to inspire innovation and transformation in their business processes through process and technology re-engineering. He continues to be a trusted adviser to strategic Public Sector and Higher Ed. customers.

Chris Atkins — Panelist

Vice President for Digital Government Transformation, SAP

Chris Atkins serves as Vice President for Digital Government Transformation in the SAP Public Sector Industry Business Unit (IBU). Chris focuses on SAP Public Sector's go to market strategy surrounding data driven government – with a special focus on the value of SAP’s business technology platform for government customers. Chris has served in this role at SAP since 2017. Chris brings nearly fifteen years of public sector industry expertise to SAP. Chris served as Director of the Indiana Office of Management and Budget for Governor Mike Pence from 2013-2015 and as a policy advisor to Governor Mitch Daniels from 2007-2011. Chris also has private sector experience, serving as Chief Innovation Officer at Mainstreet, a health care real estate development company, from 2015-2016. Chris graduated from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN, with a B.A. in economics and political science, and also holds a law degree and masters in public affairs from Indiana University—Bloomington.

Justin Marlowe — Moderator

Senior Fellow, Center for Digital Government

Justin Marlowe is a research professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. His research and teaching are focused on public finance, and he has published five books — including the first open-access textbook on public financial management — and more than 100 articles on public capital markets, infrastructure finance, financial disclosure, public financial technology, and public-private partnerships. He is an admitted expert witness in federal and state courts, and has served on technical advisory bodies for the state of Washington, the California State Auditor, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, the National Academy of Sciences, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many other public, private and nonprofit organizations. Prior to academia, he worked in local government in Michigan. He is a Certified Government Financial Manager and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and he holds a Ph.D. in political science and public administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Webinar

Responsible Spending: Using Data to Drive Transparency and Accountability