Strengthening Internal Controls Would Help the Department of Justice Reduce Duplicate Payments

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed duplicate payments made by federal agencies at selected federal payment centers, including one within the Department of Justice's Justice Management Division.

GAO identified, through independent testing of prior payments, weaknesses in the automated and manual controls used to prevent duplicate payments. GAO found that: (1) the automated internal control feature did not identify duplicate payments; (2) payment clerks did not have access to comprehensive payment data needed to prevent duplicate payments; and (3) the payment center contributed to duplicate payments by forwarding more than one vendor invoice for the same goods and services. GAO also found that: (1) the existing automated internal control system showed that it could only detect duplicate payments if the invoice number and amount paid were identical for two or more transactions; (2) the Financial Management Information System (FMIS) routine for preventing duplicate payments currently produces a daily listing of possible duplicates, but does not automatically suspend them from the payments in process; (3) manual records were not always complete; and (4) other payment data, which would be less susceptible to change on another invoice for the same item, were available and could have been used to increase the reliability of comparison.

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) 275-9490