Review of the Standard Army Civilian Payroll System in Operation at Fort Belvoir, Virginia

GAO has completed a review of the Standard Army Civilian Payroll System (STARCIPS) in operation at Fort Belvoir. The review included an evaluation of the system procedures and controls and tests of master employee records.

GAO tests of master employee records identified a significant number of errors which could affect employees' pay and leave entitlements and the accuracy of their retirement records. Because complete and accurate master employee records are not maintained, employees could receive incorrect paychecks and leave credits and have incorrect information entered in their retirement records. GAO noted a lack of an effective procedure for verifying permanent information in master employee records against source documents. In the opinion of GAO, periodic verification of this information not only would help to reduce errors but also would reduce opportunities for making payments to persons not in a pay status and for the commission of fraudulent or other irregular acts. GAO believes that procedures should be established to assure that all subsequent changes to the records are verified against the source documents. GAO found that many source documents authorizing payroll deductions were missing from payroll office files. This lack of documentation could result in unauthorized and incorrect salary payments. GAO believes that this lack of documentation results primarily from inadequate payroll office filing and control procedures. Authorization documents for payroll deductions were loosely filed in individual payroll folders and no safeguards were in effect to prevent these documents from being lost or misplaced. In addition, GAO found that the duties of personnel in payroll preparation, control, and certification functions were not adequately separated to insure effective control.

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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