The primary U.S. standard-setters and their parent organization have released a strategic plan to articulate the long-range vision and mission of each of the groups and the organization collectively.
This plan, created by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board working together with their parent, the Financial Accounting Foundation, represents an evolution and a refinement of previous plans and mission statements developed by the groups.
The collective vision is “to be a recognized leader in financial accounting and reporting,” with a collective mission “to establish and improve financial accounting and reporting standards to provide useful information to investors and other users of financial reports; and educate stakeholders on how to most effectively understand and implement those standards.”
The strategic plan affirms the discrete roles played by FASB and GASB and the FAF’s component groups, and recognizes, among other things, that FASB and GASB are solely responsible for developing and establishing financial accounting and reporting standards, while the role of the FAF management team is to provide strategic counsel and services that support the mission, activities, and independence of the two boards.
In addition to “developing the highest-quality financial accounting standards,” the plan recognizes a second critical part of the collective mission “to foster better understanding among stakeholders—those who use, prepare, and audit financial statements—as to how those standards should be applied and implemented.”
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