Financial Management Review of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Reported Allocation of Resources for its Refuge Program and New Assistant Regional Manager Positions

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on its financial management review of the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) reported allocation of resources for its Refuge Program and New Assistant Regional Manager Positions, focusing on: (1) what systems FWS used to track how allocated funds were spent and to determine the full costs of operating the refuge program; (2) how much funding the service allocated to refuge operations and maintenance and how those funds were used; and (3) the number of new Assistant Regional Director (ARD) positions FWS created and the source of funding for these positions through fiscal year (FY) 2000.

GAO noted that: (1) FWS uses its accounting system, the Federal Financial System (FFS) to track, for purposes of financial accounting and funds control, how allocated funds are spent; (2) however, FWS does not have a system for tracking the costs of the refuge program on a full cost basis, as defined by Department of the Interior policy and federal accounting standards; (3) FFS is generally being used to track direct and indirect costs at the budget activity level, but not below that level; (4) FWS' budget structure is such that the general administration (G&A) activity includes many costs that would generally be classified as indirect costs of the refuge and other programs; (5) the other three activities include many costs that would generally be considered direct costs of the programs that align with each of these activities; (6) however, FWS is not determining the full cost of the refuge program or the other major programs that are funded by the Resources Management Appropriation account because it does not use FFS or any other method to distribute all of the indirect costs in the G&A activity to each of these programs; (7) for FY 1995 through FY 1999, FWS allocated between $168.2 million and $236.5 million annually for refuge operations and maintenance; (8) for FY 1999, this represents about 36 percent of the Resource Management Appropriation account; (9) of the funds allocated to refuge operations and maintenance for FY 1995 through FY 1998, an average of: (a) 75.3 percent was obligated by refuges and wetland management districts; (b) 22.3 percent was obligated by headquarters and regional offices; (c) 2.3 percent was obligated by other units; and (d) the remaining .1 percent was unobligated; (9) of the funds allocated to refuge operations and maintenance for FY 1999: (a) 46.3 percent was obligated by refuges and wetland management districts; (b) 13.1 percent was obligated by headquarters and regional offices; (c) a small fraction was obligated by other units; and (d) the remaining 39.6 percent was unobligated as of June 30, 1999; (10) as part of implementing ecosystem management, FWS created new ARD positions in FY 1998; (11) these positions, which number 15, are funded from amounts allocated to the Refuges and Wildlife, Ecological Services, and Fisheries activities of the Resource Management Appropriation account; and (12) under the current plans, the Refuges and Wildlife activity will fund approximately 50 percent of the salaries and benefits for these new positions in FY 2000.

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: McCoy Williams Team: Government Accountability Office: Financial Management and Assurance Phone: (202) 512-6906