Indian Trust Funds

The Interior Department's High-Level Implementation Plan for improving its management of the Indian trust funds and resources under its control seeks to correct many long-standing problems. These problems include inadequate accounting and information management systems; backlogs in asset appraisals, ownership determination, and record keeping; and poor internal controls. This report assesses whether Interior has reasonable assurances that (1) the plan provides an effective solution for addressing these long-standing problems and (2) its acquisition of a new asset and land records management service will cost effectively satisfy trust management needs.

GAO noted that: (1) Interior does not have reasonable assurance that its High-Level Plan for improving Indian trust operations provides an effective solution for addressing long-standing management weaknesses; (2) the plan: (a) recognizes the severity of long-standing weaknesses in managing trust fund assets; (b) identifies 13 projects intended to improve information systems, enhance the accuracy and completeness of its data regarding the ownership and lease of Indian lands, and address deficiencies with respect to records management, training, policy and procedures, and internal controls; and (c) assigns responsibility for oversight and management of the 13 projects; (3) however, Interior has not properly analyzed its information technology needs which are essential to the overall success of the plan; (4) until Interior develops an information systems architecture addressing all of its trust management functions, it cannot ensure that its information systems will not be duplicative or incompatible or will optimally support its needs across all business areas; (5) Interior also does not know whether its acquisition of a new service for managing Indian assets and land records will cost-effectively meet trust management needs; (6) before deciding to contract with a service vendor, Interior did not adequately define important service requirements or sufficiently analyze technical alternatives; (7) Interior also did not take the steps needed to minimize acquisition risks; (8) in particular, it did not develop a risk management plan, ensure that the vendor's system could work with Interior's data and systems, or establish realistic project timeframes; and (9) thus, Interior faces an unnecessarily high risk that the service will not meet its general business and specific performance needs, and it lacks the means for dealing with this risk.

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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