GSA Workforce Modernization and Upskilling

GSA Programming at George Mason University

George Mason University has worked in partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Federal Chief Financial Officers Council (CFOC), and the 24 largest federal agencies, to support the federal government’s approach to workforce modernization and upskilling.

Costello College of Business has built a suite of programs designed for the federal financial management community as part of a broader effort to accelerate the rollout of agile and innovative approaches for upskilling the federal workforce.

These programs reflect the extensive engagement of Costello alumni serving across the federal government and are complemented by graduate certificate programs in areas such as government accounting, government contracting, and related disciplines. Together, these courses provide content aligned with 54 competency areas, with particular emphasis on data, technology, and financial management skills.

Analytics Courses

Accounting Analytics

• This course involves the collection, storage, and processing of financial and non-financial data used to report information to internal and external users. The focus is on relational database systems to capture the business processes of an organization and the internal controls embedded in those processes. 

Foundations of Data Analytics

• Students will learn about how to refine business questions and break them into good data analytics questions.  
  • Topics Covered include:
    • Defining Crunchy Questions 
    • Scope of Decision 
    • Symptoms vs Problems 
    • Temporal Influence 

Data Analytics Strategic Leadership

• Today's data-intensive environment creates new challenges to leverage analytics for strategic positioning and organizational success. Understanding and knowing how to utilize data sources is critical for leaders to compete and manage data as an asset across all functional areas. 

Audit Analytics

• This course prepares students to enter a rapidly changing audit environment. The course provides students with current techniques used by accounting and finance professionals to improve audit efficiency and effectiveness through data analytics. The topics covered include auditing through information systems, continuous auditing, automated audit procedures, and artificial intelligence to support judgment and decision-making. 

Executive Certificate Courses

Chief Learning Officer Certificate

Compliance and Ethics Courses

Fraud Examination

• Introduces strategies and techniques for fraud prevention and detection. Focuses on financial fraud such as bribery, contract rigging and kickbacks, embezzlement, fraudulent financial reporting, payroll fraud, and misappropriation of inventory and other assets. 

Fraud and the Law

• Provides an overview of US legal system including law-making process, structure of court system, and how frauds are brought to trial, prosecuted and resolved. Explores common fraud statutes used to penalize wrongdoers. 

Advanced Topics in Fraud

• Course will cover advanced topics in forensic accounting. The focus will be on contemporary issues in fraud. Examples of topics include litigation support, money laundering, consumer fraud, bankruptcy, divorce and tax fraud, fraud in e-commerce, insurance fraud and mortgage fraud. The course will provide a comprehensive look at fraud investigation. 

Governance and Ethics

• Focuses on developing understanding of corporate governance issues and ethical decision making. 

Leadership Courses

Developing Decision Making I

• Research has demonstrated many systemic and predictable ways in which human beings can make mistakes in decision making, can be inaccurate, or can miss (or mis-interpret) relevant information. This session is designed to have the participant “step back” and develop a clearer understanding of (a) how decision making SHOULD ideally work, and (b) the various ways that it can go wrong. The session will highlight a variety of "traps" that we can fall into as decision makers. 

Developing Decision Making II 

• Focuses on how decision-making changes when we shift the focus to the team, and the organization. Making decisions with other people, particularly in the context of a team/group setting, introduces a variety of complex (and sometimes counter-intuitive) factors, which can result in inefficient information utilization, inefficient solutions, and outright incorrect decisions. Developing a better understanding the additional factors that influence decision-making, and the importance of process in a group or organizational unit, is critical if we are to avoid such dysfunctional outcomes. 

Highly Effective Teams

• Various topics surrounding team design and performance will be discussed, such as how to form a team, fostering productive debate, and inclusion of all voices. Too often as team member we defer to the loudest and/or most confident individuals, both of which can be quite detrimental to team success.
  • Topics covered in this session: 
    • Team formation 
    • Team decision-making
    • Team performance 

Leadership Development I

• Program focuses on building skills related to teamwork, negotiation, conflict, adaptation, and the like for those that are early in their careers. The purpose of this program is to utilize the science behind such topics as personality, relationships, and work performance to improve work practices, communication, and, ultimately individual and group effectiveness. Participants in this program will have the opportunity to learn about their own differences and how such differences affect work. Cases, readings, and various interactive scenarios will be utilized in this program. 

Leadership and Motivation at Work

• Understanding the various forces of motivation, including intrinsic and extrinsic sources, is central to understanding your own drive, what gets in the way of that drive, and how to improve. We will discuss examples from your own experiences, a case study, and an assessment tool evaluating your personal motivation. 

Managing Talent

• Human capital is at the core of any organizational success. How a workforce is supported, incentivized, maintained, and improved is at the heart of this session. 

Leading Change

• Applies the art of leadership and advising to the marketing of ideas, particularly about making change happen. In doing so we will have to develop an understanding of each of the key stakeholders to the change, including their motivations and their social and professional networks. 

Building and Managing Effective Teams

• Teams are ubiquitous, and everyone needs to be able to work within the structure and constraints of teams. Being effective as both a member of a team and as a leader of a team are crucial skills sets in modern organizations. We will discuss the structure and design of teams, and we will explore processes within teams – with an emphasis on where teams can go wrong and fail. 
  • Topics covered in this session:
    • Design & Structure 
    • Communications & Coordination 
    • Decision Making 

Building High Performance Teams

• The majority of your work is done in teams. You are interdependent on those at various levels, with various jobs, to perform your job. Success is thus based on a systematic and thorough understanding of how high performing teams are formed and maintained. To close week 1, we will look at a small team in a far-off professional firm…then bring the question of high performance teams right into sharp focus where you are. 
  • Topics Covered in this Session: 
    • Hackman’s 5 characteristics of successful teams 
    • Improving team performance 
    • Team leadership challenges such as inclusivity and adaptability 

Managing the Business Enterprise

• This 2-day financial acumen program is designed to enhance participants' skills in organizational change, analysis of financial statements and reports, strategic-planning and critical thinking. The program is organized and delivered within the context of a non-appropriated financial business model. 

Financial Management Courses

Survey of Accounting

• Introduction to financial and managerial accounting. Financial accounting from viewpoint of those who prepare and use financial information. Financial accounting topics include recording financial transaction, creating financial statements, the study of cash and internal controls. Managerial accounting topics include introduction to job order costing, breakeven analysis, standard costs and variances and short-term decision making. 

Foundations of Government Accounting

• Examines the financial reporting environment of government entities and their financial reporting issues. Topics include introduction to government accounting framework; government financial reporting; and impact of government financial accounting on government policy setting. 

Financial Management

• Introduction to the fundamental concepts, principles, and analytical tools in finance. 

Intermediate Accounting I

• This is the first of the two-course financial accounting sequence that examines financial accounting from the viewpoint of preparers and users of financial statements, including preparing financial statements to reflect financing, operating, and investing decisions of the firm and using financial statement information to make financing, operating and investing decisions for the firm. 

Intermediate Accounting II

• This is the second of the two-course financial accounting sequence that examines financial accounting from the viewpoint of preparers and users of financial statements, including preparing financial statements to reflect financing, operating, and investing decisions of the firm and using financial statement information to make financing, operating and investing decisions for the firm. 

Financial Statement Analysis

• Overview of financial statement analysis by users of financial statements. Students learn about common features of mandatory and voluntary accounting disclosures. Primary focus is analysis of financial statement information in body of financial statements and footnotes, and implications of those disclosures for profitability analysis. 

Assurance and Audit Services

• Introduction to audit and other assurance services' objectives, theory, and practices. Focuses on developing skills for interpreting business strategies and identifying related business risks, describing internal control solutions to those risks, identifying evidential sources, providing assurance about those risks and controls, and designing strategies to provide assurance services about the reliability of business information. 

Advanced Issued in Managerial Accounting

• Examines the firm's planning and control decisions that require a more sophisticated approach than the rule-of-thumb procedures advocated for traditional cost accounting problems. 

Fundamentals of Accounting

• This course will provide students with an understanding of the principles of financial and managerial accounting. Students will gain knowledge and skills needed to prepare accounting information for external and internal users. 

Fundamentals of Accounting Certificate

• This non-degree course will provide students with an understanding of the principles of financial and managerial accounting. Students will gain knowledge and skills needed to prepare accounting information for external and internal users. 
  • Four non-degree courses are required to complete the certificate:
    • Fundamentals in Accounting
    • Foundations of Financial Reporting
    • Foundations of Taxation of Business Entities
    • Foundations of Assurance Services 

Foundations of Financial Reporting

• Upon completing the course, students will be knowledgeable about global business and trade as it applies to international financial reporting standards. 

Analysis of Financial Decisions

• Provides a survey of financial decision-making. Assists students with developing a framework within which they can understand the linkages between financial decisions and organizational performance. Examines methods for using information based on financial statements in making decisions and assessing performance, evaluating investment opportunities, and choosing among alternative sources of funds.  

Advanced Issues in Financial Reporting

• Students will gain knowledge and skills used in the interpretation of complex corporate financial accounting issues and in the preparation of complex financial statements. Topics include acquisitions, consolidations, derivatives, segment reporting, partnerships, and SEC reporting. Students also will learn to conduct research using the FASB Accounting Standards Codification to resolve ambiguous reporting issues. 

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