Refugee Program

Financial Accountability for Refugee Resettlement Can Be Improved Gao ID: NSIAD-89-92 March 17, 1989

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO audited voluntary agencies' expenditures of funds they received under the Department of State's Refugee Reception and Placement Program for fiscal years 1986 and 1987.

GAO found that: (1) Congress passed legislation in 1986 to improve the voluntary agencies' financial accountability through increased financial reporting requirements; (2) meaningful comparison of program costs among agencies was difficult due to their inconsistent data reporting; (3) State did not effectively monitor the accuracy, comparability, or reliability of the agencies' financial reports; (4) the cooperative agreements between State and the voluntary agencies did not require the agencies to prepare financial statements audited in accordance with generally accepted government accounting standards (GAGAS); (5) the cooperative agreements' requirement that agencies spend funds within 12 months after the fiscal year in which they received them did not prevent agencies from accumulating large unobligated balances; (6) the agencies' differing methods and assumptions for classifying direct-service and administrative costs made interpretation of reports difficult; and (7) the agencies' reports to Congress did not provide an accurate description of the proportion of federal funds they used for direct refugee assistance.

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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