Indian Trust Funds

This report addresses steps that the Department of the Interior has taken in response to earlier GAO reports on the agency's efforts to acquire and develop its Trust Asset and Accounting Management System (TAAMS). This report also reviews the business and technical risks and challenges still confronting Interior as it deploys TAAMS. GAO found that Interior has taken some positive steps to address concerns raised in GAO's 1999 report. These actions include: (1) adopting a generally accepted methodology for developing plans for mitigating risks, transitioning to the new system, and validating and maintaining the integrity of the system throughout its useful life; (2) strengthening its testing processes by expanding tests to assess how the system responds to unexpected conditions; and (3) developing an information systems architecture for Indian trust management to ensure that the trust fund and related systems are interoperable and are cost-effective. However, GAO concluded that several significant business and technical challenges still put the TAAMS effort at considerable risk. For example, Interior still must revamp policies and procedures for the entire trust management cycle and address long-standing internal control weaknesses. Interior needs to ensure that its new contractor is following disciplined processes for developing and testing TAAMS.

GAO noted that: (1) Interior is taking positive actions to address several of the concerns raised in GAO's 1999 reports as well as additional concerns raised in GAO's subsequent briefings on TAAMS testing efforts; (2) Interior has taken actions to strengthen its testing processes; (3) Interior is beginning to develop an information systems architecture for Indian trust management which is needed to ensure that trust fund and related systems are interoperable, function together efficiently, and are cost-effective over their life cycles; (4) these actions are good steps toward enhancing management of the TAAMS effort; (5) however, there are a number of major business and technical challenges that still put the TAAMS effort at considerable risk; (6) as to the business challenges, Interior has not yet completed actions designed to enhance overall trust fund management, including its efforts to revamp policies and procedures for the entire trust management cycle and to address long-standing internal control weaknesses; (7) both efforts could have a significant impact on TAAMS because they may require new features to be built into the system or current capabilities to be modified and, in turn, increase the risk of introducing new system defects; (8) fixing such defects late in the development effort can be very costly; (9) in addition, Interior has not reengineered the business processes that TAAMS is to support even though these processes were designed in a very different system environment; (10) without taking time now to examine and revise its business processes, Interior will not be able to maximize the benefits that can be gained from TAAMS and it may perpetuate outmoded ways of doing business; (11) on the technical side, there are actions underway to strengthen Interior's management of the TAAMS project, such as hiring a contractor to evaluate data integrity and the adoption of more disciplined testing processes; and (12) there are challenging undertakings still ahead.

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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