Survey of Actions To Correct Problems With the Navy's Military Pay System

GAO has completed a survey of the actions the Navy has taken or has planned to correct the longstanding problems being experienced with the Navy's Joint Uniform Military Pay System (JUMPS).

Based on an analysis of payments of Navy personnel at four sites for two paydays, GAO estimated that the disbursing officers at the sites overrode from 20 to 82 percent of the forecast payments. The reasons for the overrides were the same at each site: (1) members were paid the odd cents that had accumulated because the Navy issues checks only for whole dollars earned; (2) retroactive payments or deductions were not incorporated into the personnel pay forecasts; and (3) there was a long time period between the pay forecast by the Navy Finance Center and the actual payday. Under the Air Force and Army payroll systems, pay is centrally computed and overrides are not permitted. However, the disbursing officers may request and make supplemental payments if needed. The Navy plans to have a central pay computation system for personnel who choose the electronic transfer of pay to their banks; however, personnel not choosing the electronic fund transfer will continue to be paid under the current system. If the Navy adopts central pay computation processing for all personnel, overrides and the manual reconciliation by disbursing officers would be substantially reduced and central control over pay computation would be better ensured.

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: John F. Simonette Team: General Accounting Office: Accounting and Financial Management Division Phone: (202) 275-9489