Accountants in this agency develop and maintain financial management systems, prepare and analyze budgetary and program cost statements, check costs of commercial food processors and producers, audit various operations in the office and the field, and check records of commercial, cooperative, and state and municipal organizations participating in agricultural programs.
Department of Commerce
This agency provides a wide range of operations. It maintains the standards of weights and measures, takes the census every ten years, operates the weather bureau, issues patents and trademarks, compiles and analyzes business statistics, looks after the shipping industry, gathers information about domestic and foreign industries and trade, publishes technical information for the government, and handles allocations of materials necessary to military energy programs.
Accountants here maintain regulatory and cost accounting systems and audit steamship, railroad, and utility companies.
Department of Defense
This department, which includes the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, is the largest of the governmental organizations.
Here you will find a continuing supply of well-qualified accountants and auditors who are needed to handle cost accounting, property and inventory accounting, internal and external auditing, and budgeting. This department has established a career program to help recruit auditors and accountants. Work is in this country and abroad.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
Under HEW are the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. Offices are located all over the country, and accountants can work anywhere.
The work mostly involves cost accounting, hospital accounting, budgeting, auditing, and financial management.
Post Office Department
This department employs hundreds of thousands of people and operates more than 35,000 post offices. All this naturally involves large sums of money and huge volumes of transactions. To handle all of it, the department has set up within its organization a Bureau of Finance, which looks after the accounting, budgeting, cost accounting, statistics and financial data, and financial management work.
Accountants who are interested in automatic data processing, systems development and installation, cost and statistical analysis, internal auditing and budgeting will find jobs with the post office. Opportunities for moving ahead are good.
Department of the Treasury
This department serves as the government's banker, book-keeper, disburser, collector, trustee, investor, lender, printer of the currency, coiner of money, supervisor of national banks, and financial adviser to the President and Congress. It's easy to see how each of these duties involves accounting.
Under this department's control are other bureaus or offices: Bureau of Accounts, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
To carry out its many functions, the Treasury Department needs people educated and trained in accounting, auditing, budgeting, and financial management. Here accountants may be system accountants, general accountants, cost accountants, internal auditors, revenue agents, bank examiners, budget and fiscal officers, management analysts, tax analysts, and public debt analysts. Although computers are important in this department, there still remain a great many jobs.
This agency oversees all the other agencies of the government; it takes care of the financial management of all other agencies.
This department is headed by the Comptroller General, who is the chief accountant of the nation. An independent agency in the legislative branch, this office has the important job of making audits of the programs, activities, and financial responsibilities of federal departments and agencies. It even checks government contracts. Created by Congress in 1921, this department is independent and nonpolitical.
Auditors and accountants for this department have the responsibility of looking into the workings of other departments. The office is responsible to Congress, which likes to know how the money it appropriates is being spent. For example, auditors may audit the General Dynamics Company, which builds rockets. Auditors may visit the proving grounds of the NASA Flight Research Center in California. They also check air force bases, the Bureau of Public Roads, or a new press printing dollar bills. The principal office of General Accounting is in Washington, D.C., but there are a number of Ojjthers around the country and overseas.
If you'd like to work for the General Accounting Office, the qualifications are graduation from a four-year college with an accounting major; class rank in the upper 25 percent; and a B average in all college courses leading to the bachelor's degree.
Here is how you can apply. Don't worry about written exams, because they aren't required. Fill out an Application for Federal Employment (Standard Form 57). Ask your college placement office for a copy, or write to the nearest civil service office, listed in your telephone directory. Submit a transcript of your college grades and credits. If you haven't graduated, prepare a list of the college courses you expect to complete, showing the name of the course, credit hours, and date of completion.
