Unreliable Evaluations Detract From Treasury's Progress To Implement the Financial Integrity Act

Gao ID: GGD-86-10 October 10, 1985

GAO reviewed the Department of the Treasury's progress in evaluating its internal controls and accounting systems under the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA).

GAO found that Treasury is: (1) correcting the two material weaknesses GAO identified in its previous FMFIA report; and (2) improving its accounting systems to bring them into conformance with FMFIA requirements. GAO also found that, while vulnerability assessments are a crucial part of the FMFIA process, Treasury's assessments are unreliable because: (1) managers of identical functions rated like variables differently; (2) managers frequently did not consider major operations of assessed functions; and (3) it failed to evaluate certain significant automatic data processing (ADP) systems and internal controls. The Customs Service is developing an alternative approach to vulnerability assessments that may improve the reliability of future assessments. In addition, GAO found that 6 of Treasury's 26 accounting systems conformed with the Comptroller General's requirements, 2 systems did not conform, and 18 systems conformed in all material respects with limited instances of nonconformance.

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: Gene L. Dodaro Team: General Accounting Office: General Government Division Phone: (202) 512-9459


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