By Liz Farmer, includes “Relmond Van Daniker, a longtime leader in government accounting, retired this month. Van Daniker's career is an impressive one: 18 years as the executive director of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers; 30 years as a government accounting professor at the University of Kentucky; and, most recently, 11 years as CEO of the Association of Government Accountants (AGA). … [he] was the driving force behind the Citizen-Centric Reporting initiative, a template that distills the most important and complicated financial and performance information about a jurisdiction into a four-page, easy-to-read document. … You have pushed for more graduate-level work in government accounting but interest has been so subdued that the AGA couldn't find takers on its scholarship for enough government accounting doctoral candidates. What are your fears about the future of the field? There's this big push from universities to be in the top 20 -- to get students published in the more popular, renowned journals rather than the applied journals. As a result, we don't have anybody doing research in government accounting. I don't see things changing dramatically in the future. That's a problem, especially with procurement. If the government doesn't have people as good as the contract community, they're going to win and the people lose. I want the government side to be as good as the private-sector side and it's not that way now. …”
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