Forest Service

The Forest Service is highly vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse because it lacks an effective system of internal controls for its contracting activities. The agency's internal control system is lacking in two key respects. First, the Forest Service is not complying with many critical internal control standards. Second, the Forest Service's primary internal control techniques--the system that sets limits on contracting officers' authority, along with periodic field office reviews--are not effectively implemented.

GAO noted that: (1) the Forest Service is highly vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse because it does not have an effective system of internal control for its contracting activities; (2) the agency's internal control system is lacking in two key respects; (3) the Forest Service is not complying with many critical internal control standards; (4) namely, the agency: (a) has no written plan defining control objectives and techniques; (b) lacks complete documentation in the contract files of critical contract award and administration actions; (c) does not routinely supervise contracting staff; (d) inconsistently monitors contractors' progress; and (e) has significant errors and omissions in its management information system for contract actions; (5) the Forest Service's primary internal control techniques are not effectively implemented; (6) the Forest Service is not preparing adequate acquisition plans or incorporating performance factors into its contracting process; (7) the Federal Acquisition Regulation requires agencies to prepare acquisition plans to enhance contracting's effectiveness and lower costs; (8) the six Forest Service offices that GAO visited either had no acquisition plans for fiscal year 1996 or could not make effective use of the ones that they had because the plans were incomplete or not completed on time; (9) also, the Forest Service's contracts for services seldom require contractors to meet preestablished performance goals, a technique that other federal agencies have used to save costs; (10) furthermore, the Forest Service does not routinely evaluate contractors' performance or effectively store past performance information so it can be used in negotiating future contracts; (11) finally, the Forest Service has not implemented procurement performance measures to evaluate and improve the procurement system; (12) three primary obstacles stand in the way of improving the Forest Service's procurement system; (13) Forest Service officials have not been aggressive in establishing an effective internal control system or implementing information management initiatives that could improve their contracting's effectiveness; (14) when the Forest Service tries to improve its contracting practices, the organizational structure of the contracting function impedes these efforts by limiting direct accountability; and (15) the Forest Service's long-standing culture of local independence and autonomy appears to make contracting managers hesitant to provide the close oversight of contracting activities needed to hold staff accountable for performance improvement.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: