Financial Management

The Department of Transportation's (DOT) budget for fiscal year 1992 totaled more than $36 billion, funding everything from mass transit grants to contracts for air-traffic control upgrades. For the last eight years, DOT has been developing a single accounting and financial information system to keep track of these funds. This system was intended to (1) consolidate numerous inefficient accounting systems into a single departmentwide system, (2) correct existing accounting weaknesses related to disbursing payments and collecting debts, and (3) provide managers and Congress with better information to oversee programs and operations. The schedule for installing the system has already slipped two years, and cost estimates have soared from $17.6 million to $26.4 million. Although DOT has made progress in achieving the system's first two goals, the third goal of providing better management information remains elusive.

GAO found that: (1) goals for DAFIS include consolidation of existing accounting systems into one departmentwide system, correction of accounting disbursement weaknesses, and timely access to financial information for DOT managers and Congress for oversight purposes; (2) departmentwide DAFIS installation is behind schedule, and costs have increased from $17.6 million to $26.4 million; (3) improvements resulting from DAFIS installation include a reduction in the number of accounting systems from 14 to 7, the elimination of many district accounting offices, and the correction of many accounting weaknesses; (4) DAFIS improved DOT payment and collection capabilities and includes features ensuring on-time payments; (5) DAFIS limitations include an inability to track prior-year recoveries and accumulate cost information; (6) DAFIS does not provide adequate financial information to DOT managers and Congress for program and operational oversight; (7) DAFIS financial information limitations include problems in generating detailed spending information on long-term projects, an inability to create useful reports evaluating spending trends and payment performance oversight, and untimely financial data processing; (8) DOT retains separate automated systems to generate more timely spending information, and these separate systems cause inefficiencies and data duplication; and (9) DOT lacks an adequate strategy for creating timetables, allocating resources, removing inefficiencies, and integrating DAFIS with other subsidiary financial systems.

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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