Concerns Raised About Use of Unreconciled Activity Codes to Requisition New and Excess Government Property

Gao ID: GAO-01-86R December 6, 2000

Concerns have been raised about the use of unreconciled activity address codes to requisition new and excess government property. The Department of Defense's (DOD) regulation 4000.25-6-M requires that all military services and DOD activities reconcile the activity codes to the Defense Automatic Addressing System Center's master file. Such reconciliations could prevent unauthorized personnel from requesting and receiving government property. GAO found, however, that many military service points failed to comply with DOD's regulation. Most indicated that they were unaware of the requirement. As a result of this, 27,879 activity codes appeared either in the agency record but not the Addressing System Center's master file or in the Center's file but not the agency record. In addition, agencies that have their own internal activity code files do not routinely reconcile to the master file. This failure resulted in 97,450 activity codes being identified as questionable. In both situations, inventory management is vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. In fact, preliminary indications are that such questionable activity codes were used to requisition millions of dollars worth of excess and new property.

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: William M. Solis Team: Government Accountability Office: Defense Capabilities and Management Phone: (202) 512-8412


The Justia Government Accountability Office site republishes public reports retrieved from the U.S. GAO These reports should not be considered official, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Justia.