Unreliable Evaluations Detract from Treasury's Progress to Implement the Financial Integrity Act

摘要

Again this year, GAO conducted reviews of 23 federal agencies' efforts to implement the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act of 1982. The act is intended to help reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in government operations through annual agency self-assessments of internal controls and accounting systems. This report discusses how Treasury's efforts in closely following existing guidelines resulted in continued progress in its implementation of the act. Notwithstanding the progress that was made, Treasury needs to improve its evaluation process in certain areas to better assure that the process can be relied on to determine the adequacy of Treasury's internal controls. Treasury's managers are confused regarding the vulnerability assessments, a crucial element of the evaluation process, which caused the assessments to be unreliable. Treasury needs to develop guidance that reduces the present complexity and subjectivity of the assessments. GAO recommends several actions designed to do this.