Controls for the Electronic Data Interchange at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Columbus

摘要

On May 21, 1997, the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) directed the move to a paper-free contracting process which would modernize the acquisition processes of contract writing, administration, finance, and auditing. In 1998, the Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office assumed a lead role in the Electronic Data Interchange as part of the DoD Paper-Free Contracting Initiative. The Electronic Data Interchange sends and receives contract payment information from computer to computer in a standard format, thus allowing documents to be received, validated, accepted, and immediately processed. Electronic Data Interchange was designed to reduce the amount of paper used and stored by DoD contracting personnel, reduce the contract payment cycle time, and facilitate the sharing of information among Government and commercial communities. In essence, Electronic Data Interchange should eliminate the need to use paper documentation to enter contract data in contract pay systems and financial data in accounting systems. Defense Finance and Accounting Service Columbus personnel rely on the information accessed from the Electronic Data Interchange to make an average of 1.2 million payments (344,000 for Mechanization of Contract Administration Services System and 922,000 for Standard Automated Materiel Management System) yearly totaling approximately $40 billion. The Director, Defense Finance and Accounting Service Columbus, requested that we review the Electronic Document Access System and the Electronic Data Interchange to determine whether sufficient safeguards were in place to verify the accuracy of electronically transmitted contractual data. We issued a report on the Electronic Document Access System that recommended that the security responsibilities and Defense Finance and Accounting Service security and training requirements for the Electronic Document.