October marks the start of the federal fiscal year, and as in every year since 1994, Congress and the president have failed to give agencies their annual spending authority on time, opting instead to dole it out piecemeal. This time they are doing so in the form of a 45-day continuing resolution that expires Nov. 16.

Come to think of it, this year is shaping up like a mirror image of 1995, the year in which the Republican-controlled Congress played chicken with a Democratic president. Back then, Congress passed a continuing resolution that expired in mid- November, and President Clinton swore — in hopes of forcing Congress to pass the appropriations bills — that he would not sign a second. Most people agree that Congress’ failure to pass those bills, thus shutting down the government, hurt the Republicans in the 1996 election. This time the shoe is on the other foot politically, and it is anyone’s guess how it will all play out.

Any management guru will tell you that the first priority when running a large organization is completing the annual plan and budget on time. Yet one of the largest operations in the world has violated this basic business concept annually for more than a decade. This bad habit is institutionalized to the point that must-pass appropriations bills attract so many politically motivated amendments that instead of must-pass they become must-punt. This year, the process has devolved — as it did in 1995 — into a punting game up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I can only imagine how frustrating this must be for government managers. The public holds them accountable for mission results via a 535-member board of directors — 435 in the House, 100 in the Senate — who, because they can’t restrain themselves during the democratic budget-making process, set the worst possible example for agency managers. They ignore the considerable effort expended to comply with all the capital planning and investment control activities — already done at this point for 2009 — while arbitrarily forcing them to live according to the prior year’s plan.

Yet it does no good for a government employee — whether politically appointed or career civil servant — to complain, lest the fiscal-law accounting police descend to dissect suspicious- looking transactions. Yes, amazingly, at the operational levels, this all boils down to accounting.

I teach sellers of technology to address in the following order three chains of command present in all transactions of significant size: the program people, who have the requirements and own the mission and the budget, and the finance people, who must sign off through the comptroller’s chain of command before the third group, the contracting officers with the actual spending authority, can start the procurement. All three groups must be satisfied for a deal to get done.

This means that cross-walking and mapping are the order of the day for government customers as they try to address mission realities while constrained by a short — sometimes outof- date — fiscal leash.

Of course, this is exactly the kind of thing those of us in business development and sales are called on to do as we serve our government customers and the interests of our companies. It’s just that now, with oversight focus on both fiscal law and procurement law enforcement, there are a host of process requirements to keep in mind as we seek to address the concerns of the various stakeholders who are part of any large opportunity and, at the same time, try to realistically predict the outcome for our company’s financial prognosticators.

One thing is sure: This first quarter will be slow, and the slow pace will probably extend, as it did last year, into January and February. Last year, we didn’t get the final omnibus continuing resolution until Feb. 15, which was 10 days after the president’s 2008 budget was submitted to Congress.

Steve Charles is co-founder of immixGroup Inc., a consulting firm. E-mail him at steve_charles@immixgroup.com.