Coast Guard

Acquisition Program Staff Were Funded Improperly Gao ID: RCED-93-123 April 27, 1993

In its fiscal year 1992 appropriations, the Coast Guard received $34 million to fund no more than 621 full-time staff positions to support its acquisition, construction, and improvement account. This account generally funds major acquisitions, such as shore facilities, vessels, and aircraft. GAO found that the Coast Guard improperly used its general operating expenses account to support staff doing work on acquisition, construction, and improvement projects. This entailed spending about $5.3 million to support about 94 full-time positions. This improper use of funds occurred because the Coast Guard lacked adequate policies and procedures to ensure the proper funding of staffing for acquisition, construction, and improvement projects. Coast Guard officials said that they had informal guidelines for deciding when to fund positions through the acquisition, construction, and improvement account but that these guidelines had never been formally spelled out.

GAO found that the: (1) Coast Guard improperly used its operating expense (OE) account to support staff on AC&I projects; (2) Coast Guard did not have adequate policies and procedures for proper funding of AC&I staff; (3) Coast Guard used OE-funded staff on AC&I projects because OE-funded activities made up all or most of the work assignments, no AC&I-funded staff was available, or a project's workload was too large or too small for the number of staff provided; (4) Coast Guard's failure to shift funding sources prevented it from accurately identifying the costs of staffing its activities; (5) Coast Guard did not have sufficient funds in its FY 1992 AC&I account to reimburse its OE account for improperly charged funds; and (6) Coast Guard lacked adequate internal controls to ensure that AC&I staff are funded from the appropriate account.

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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