Food Assistance

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service runs the Child and Adult Care Food Program using designated state agencies. The program provides more than $1.5 billion in benefits each year to children and adults in day care. In response to continuing concerns about fraud and abuse in the program, this report examines (1) the extent to which the states have implemented controls to prevent and detect fraud and abuse and (2) the Service's effectiveness in directing the states' efforts to implement controls.

GAO noted that: (1) almost all of the state agencies reported they had implemented, at least in part, FNS' minimum required controls for detecting fraud and abuse in the Child and Adult Care Food Program; (2) these agencies, however, reported variation in implementing the additional controls recommended by the Inspector General and task force; (3) state agencies cited factors that made it difficult to strengthen controls over fraud and abuse, including: (a) a lack of resources (staff, funding, or computer technology); (b) a lack of training in and knowledge of how to identify fraud and abuse; and (c) unclear regulations by FNS on removing noncompliant sponsors from the program; (4) according to FNS and state officials, state agencies may be reluctant to adopt additional fraud and abuse controls because they view themselves as providers of program benefits, not policing organizations; (5) FNS has not effectively directed the states' efforts to protect against fraud and abuse in this program; (6) it has yet to strengthen the minimum requirements for the states' controls over fraud and abuse, despite recommendations from the Inspector General and federal-state task force dating back to 1995; (7) this has contributed to many states not implementing the types of controls necessary to reduce the program's vulnerability to illegal or inappropriate uses of federal funds; (8) FNS has not adequately monitored the states' implementation of controls over fraud and abuse and has little basis for identifying and correcting problems that the states may be experiencing; (9) FNS has had difficulty correcting problems involving the states' compliance with required controls, partially because it lacks an appropriate range of sanctions; (10) agency officials told GAO that these oversight weaknesses largely resulted from insufficient resources, noting that in the past few years, the agency needed to concentrate many of its resources on implementing changes required by welfare reform; (11) beginning in fiscal year 1999, Congress authorized an additional $1 million annually for 5 years to strengthen the agency's efforts in preventing and detecting fraud and abuse in the food program; and (12) FNS has initiated but not completed actions to address these problems.

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.

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