It seems that just about every month the GAO has at least one negative report on DOD. Perhaps, one should expect this as the agency cannot get itself together to conduct a reasonable audit.
The latest report concerns 'improper payments', which is "any payment that should not have been made or that was made in an incorrect amount (including overpayments and underpayments) under statutory,contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements". Guess how much that number was in 2011 - $1.1 billion. It's true that in the DOD world that is chicken feed. But, as Senator Dirksen is alleged to have said, " A billion
here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
The issue of improper payments is so endemic to the government that two laws have been passed: the Improper Payments Information
Act of 2002 (IPIA) and the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery
Act of 2010 (IPERA). Yet, GAO found that DOD's
improper payment estimates reported in its fiscal year 2011 Agency
Financial Report were neither reliable nor statistically valid because
of long-standing and pervasive financial management weaknesses and
significant deficiencies in the department's procedures to estimate
improper payments.
No comments:
Post a Comment